Table 1. — Fishery and biological data of spearfish 

 caught during the annual NMFS SEFC recreational 

 billfish surveys, 1974-86. 



figures reported by Robins (1975) for recreation- 

 ally caught spearfish in Florida and are consider- 

 ably smaller than the reported maximum length 

 of 200 cm and weight of 45 kg (Nakamura 1985). 

 The length:weight relationship of 34 spearfish 

 observed is given in Figure 2. Also, there is no 

 notable sexual dimorphism reflected in the 

 spearfish length-weight relationship (Fig. 2) as 

 reported in other billfish species (Nakamura 

 1985). This, however, may be an artifact of the 

 small sample size. 



The determination of an accurate sex ratio is 

 difficult owing to the small sample size (Table 1) 

 and the large time frame and geographic area 

 from which these data were collected. Of the 20 

 fish that were reliably sexed, 12 were male and 8 

 were female; this indicates a male to female ratio 

 of 1:0.66, compared with the 19 specimens and 

 1:1 ratio observed by Robins (1975) in the 

 Florida recreational billfish fishery. When the 

 two data sets are aggregated to form a larger 

 sample size of recreationally caught spearfish, 

 these data provide a ratio of 1:0.80. Interesting- 

 ly, Ueyanagi et al. (1970) reported that 106 male 

 and 62 female spearfish were incidentally cap- 

 tured by Japanese tuna longline vessels in the 





eg 



ILI 



5 



28 

 26 - 

 24 - 



22 - 

 20 - 



18 



16 



14 H 



12 



10 

 8- 

 6- 

 4- 

 2- 

 



W> 2.7 X 10"* L^® 



R - 0.81 

 N= 34 



• FEMALE 



* MALE 



D UNKNOWN 



~1 1 1 1 — 



100 120 140 



LOWER JAW FORK LENGTH (CM) 



~i 1 1 1 r 



160 180 200 



Figure 2.— Lengthiweight relationship of spearfish observed during annual NMFS/SEFC recreational 



billfish surveys, 1974-86. 



983 



