Edited by Maria Lourdes D. Palomares and Daniel Pauly.

DIRECTOR’S FOREWORD 

The report presented here is ‘only’ a compilation of growth and related parameters for marine, non-fish vertebrates and invertebrates, with only brief analyses, mainly to compare, and thus partly validate, the datasets. One could ask, what is the point? Why such compilation?

In the late 1970s, I undertook a similar compilation of growth parameters in fish [Pauly, D. 1978. A preliminary compilation of fish length growth parameters.

The 7 papers of this report, which present growth parameters for marine mammals, seabirds, marine reptiles and many of the invertebrate tribes, however, will not lead to the creation of another database. This is so because a database and website have recently been created for non-fish marine metazoans. It is SeaLifeBase (www.sealifebase.org), which is patterned after FishBase, and which can therefore accommodate, in addition to the names of marine animals, any amount of biological information, notably growth and related parameters (length-weight relationships, size at first maturity, longevity, etc.).

Hence this report, in addition to its direct utility to readers, will serve as documentation for a large set of the growth parameters incorporated into SeaLifeBase. These parameters will be of interest to theoreticians, i.e., biologists who want to compare life history strategies in a wide range of taxa, and especially to ecosystem modelers, who need to populate their models with growth parameters and/or parameters derived from these, such as production/biomass ratios, an indication of productivity.

This report, therefore, endeavors to cover as wide a range of morphologies and ecological niches as possible. This was particularly successful for the non-fish vertebrates, of which all major groups are represented. For example, in the case of the reptilians, all marine families are represented, and most of the species, except for the very speciose sea snakes (Family Hydrophidae), for which, however, a very good sample of representative species is available.

The invertebrates, obviously, are the group for which we have the smallest sample relative to the number of extant species. The compilation that we have here, covering mainly commercial species from the Mediterranean is a good start, however, as are the two papers from the Western Central Pacific, with growth parameters for lobsters and oysters, respectively. Jointly with the growth parameters that were already included in SeaLifeBase, this should provide a starting point for most analyses.

Director, UBC Fisheries Centre

Contents

Director's Foreword         

Growth of marine mammals
M.L. Deng Palomares, Patricia M.E. Sorongon, Andrea Hunter and Daniel Pauly 

Life-history patterns in marine birds
Vasiliki S. Karpouzi and Daniel Pauly       

Growth of marine reptiles
M.L. Deng Palomares, Christine Dar, Gary Fry     

Growth of leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) in captivity with inferences on growth in the wild
T. Todd Jones, Mervin Hastings, Brian Bostrom, Daniel Pauly and David R. Jones

Length-weight relationships and additional growth parameters for sea turtles
Colette Wabnitz and Daniel Pauly      

A preliminary compilation of life-history data for Mediterranean marine invertebrates
Charalampos A. Apostolidis and Konstantinos I. Stergiou   

Growth estimates of the spiny lobster, Panulirus longipes (A. Milne-Edwards, 1868) in captivity
Len R. Garces         

Development and growth of edible oysters (Ostreidae) in Papua New Guinea
J. L. Maclean and M.L. Deng Palomares