Length-weight relationships of fishes from South African estuaries

Abstract

Fish length + or - weight relationships, which describe mathematically the correlation between fish length and weight, are useful for converting length observations into weight estimates to provide some measure of biomass (Froese 1998). In fish studies, the length of a fish is often more rapidly and easily measured than is its mass; it is therefore convenient to be able to determine mass where only the length is known. This paper describes the length + or - weight relationship of 83 fish species captured in South African estuaries.