Note on Length Weight Relation in Fishes

Fishes are unique among vertebrates, especially when their growth patterns are taken into account. Baring very few exceptions, fishes show an indeterminate type of growth, implying that they show continued growth throughout the life, invariably with rate of growth declining with age (Mommsen, 2001). The growth among fishes, like other organism are affected by several factors like abundance of food, ambient physical environment, internal biological cycles (e.g. reproductive cycles), etc. Growth monitoring is a key discipline in fisheries, be it capture or culture sector. Growth can be monitored either in terms of change in length or weight. Weight-length relationship enables the inter-conversion of these two measures of growth. Establishing weight-length relationships though a routine exercise in fisheries, still the relationships are available for a limited number of species, considering the enormous α- diversity among fishes (Kulbicki et al. 2005; Froese, 2006)