Age and growth characteristics of crimson sea bream <Emphasis Type="Italic">Paragyrops edita</Emphasis> Tanaka in Beibu Gulf

Abstact  Age and growth characteristics of crimson sea bream Paragyrops edita Tanaka in Beibu Gulf were studied through bottom trawling and gillnet fleets fishing from July 2006 to December 2007. A total number of 1155 individuals, ranging from 49 to 249 mm in standard length was examined. The age of the fish was determined from sagittal otoliths. One year growth was made up of one translucent and one opaque zone. A maximum likelihood estimation procedure was used to fit the Von Bertalanffy, Logistic and Gompertz growth functions to the length-at-age data. ARSS indicated that there were no significant differences in growth between sexes in the three growth models (P>0.05), and the Von Bertalanffy growth function L _t =292.8{1−exp −0.167(t+1.116)]} was selected as the most appropriate growth model according to Akaike’s information criterion (AIC).