BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Fish Sci.
Sec. Fish Ecology
Improved estimates of growth for wild Yellowtail Kingfish (Seriola lalandi) off eastern-Australia using multiple data sources
Provisionally accepted
- 1New South Wales Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development. Fisheries., New South Wales, Australia
- 2University of Technology Sydney, School of Life Sciences,, New South Wales, Australia
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Unbiased growth functions are imperative for stock assessment and sustainable management of fisheries. We present a case-study demonstrating implications of data collection biases from fishery-dependent sampling where length-selective fishing occurs. Yellowtail Kingfish Seriola lalandi supports substantial fisheries around the world and is the focus of a developing aquaculture industry. Estimating growth rates in wild populations has been challenging, with uncertainties around accurate estimates of length-at-age from which to model growth. Length-at-age data are generally derived from sectioned sagittal otoliths. We generated new estimates of growth rates for Yellowtail Kingfish from south-eastern Australia by excluding data for age classes not fully recruited to the fishery based on significance tests of normality and skewness. New length-at-age estimates for young fish were generated from dive surveys around offshore Fish Aggregation Devices (FADs) to inform early growth. Otolith-derived age classes younger than 5 years old were biased in terms of faster growing individuals being sampled. Length-selective biases from fishery dependent sampling results in overestimation of the von Bertalanffy growth function parameter L∞ and under-estimation of the parameters K and t0. Revised growth function parameters of L∞ = 133.40 cm fork length, K = 0.13 year-1, and t0 = -1.20 years are substantially different from those used for stock assessment. We recommend that future studies of growth rates would benefit from more fishery-independent sampling, the collection of greater numbers of larger and older fish, and regular sampling and direct ageing of young-of-the year fish recruiting to offshore FADs.
Keywords: Bias, fishery dependent sampling, Growth models, Length-at-age, Seriola lalandi
Received: 27 Oct 2025; Accepted: 16 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Stewart, Stuart, Hughes and Booth. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: John Stewart
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