Recalculated growth rates for sand flounder, rhombosolea plebeia, from tagging experiments in canterbury, New Zealand, 1964–66

Abstract

Growth rate estimates are presented for male and female sand flounder, Rhombosolea plebeia, in Canterbury, New Zealand. These are derived from a maximum likelihood growth model fitted to length increment data on 1830 fish (1276 female, 554 male) tagged between 1964 and 1966. The model allows estimation of parameters describing individual and seasonal growth variability, and comparisons of growth rates between areas, years, and tag type. The new growth rates are compared to two previously published estimates and found to be slightly higher than ones derived from a small subset of the same data, and considerably higher than ones that were based on age‐length data. It is suggested that the present growth estimates are more reliable than the latter and that the most likely reason for the difference is inaccuracies in aging. Published yield per recruit estimates based on the age‐length data growth estimates are probably conservative. © 1988 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.