of fish selected for aging within each length group should be dependent 

 upon the time and man-power allocated for aging in the laboratory. This 

 procedure would eliminate unnecessary labor and the possible selection 

 of a non-random sample by bias. The selection of a larger number of 

 fish in older age classes would also increase the accuracy of the age 

 composition sample. Increasing the number of winter flounder measured 

 during the population surveys would also increase the precision of the 

 calculated age structure. 

 Length - weight and Length - fecundity relationships 



Length-weight and length-fecundity relationships were reported in 

 NUSCo (1977) . Both relationships were calculated independently by NUSCo 

 and Battelle personnel; the former used specimens from throughout the 

 Millstone area and the latter used specimens taken in the Niantic River. 

 As these relationships were curvilinear, a log transformation was used 

 in all cases except for the original 1977 Niantic River length-weight 

 relationship in which three separate arithmetic regressions were determined 

 for three age classes (1, 2, and 3+) . Differences among the calculated 

 relationships were probably due to bias in sample selection and handling 

 of specimens, differences in equipment or techniques used, and so forth. 

 These differences may be important; in terms of estimation as Ricker 

 (1975) noted that a small change in the exponent can mean a fairly large 

 difference in computed weight or fecundity. Since the length-fecundity 

 relationships computed for the two studies were not significantly different, 

 the data bases were combined in hopes of improving the fit and lowering 

 standard errors. When data were examined, it was found that the regres- 

 sions calculated in 1977 could not be exactly reproduced. In most cases 

 additional specimens were found in the data base and since it was impossible 



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