For establishing the technology of pisciculture, it is necessary to be able to forecast the growth of the cultured fish. With this purpose in mind we have analyzed reliable field data concerning the average growth of the O-year-old yellow tail (Hamachi in Japanese) cultured in fish farms located on the Seto Inland Sea coast.
If the food supply is sufficient in quantity and adequate in quality when under the normal influence of all other possible factors, the average growth rate of the cultured fishes may be given as a function of water temperature (the most potent environmental factor) and average fish size (the most fundamental biotic factor) by the following empirical relationship.
d (
W/
W∞)/
dt=
λ(1-
W∞) {In (1-
W/
W∞ )
-1}
γ where
W is the average body weight at time
t,
W∞ the theoretical maximum body weight ( ?? 15.8Kg),
dW/
dt the growth rate,
γ a constant characteristic of the species and
λ depends upon the water temperature and perhaps upon the species.
In case of the 0-year-old cultured yellow tail, the value of
γ was determined to be 0.167 (Fig. 1) and then the dependence of
λ upon the water temperature was accounted for as shown graphically in Fig. 2.
It may be thought that the amount of fish produced in any fish farm presents the “results” brought about by the combined action of natural and artificial factors on the growth of the fishes cultured there. Accordingly, the empirical relationship above shown will also serve as a standard of comparison with which to examine the actual growth of the cultured fish and to clarify the time when or the degree in which the adverse influence of some factors exercising on the growth shows itself.
pplied to the growth rate curve of fishes cultured in some fish farms different in shape, structure, rate of water exchange and degree of crowding of fishes, these procedures reached considerable success in diagnosing the environmental conditions existing during the course of culture and in obtaining correlations from which to predict the effect of some factors on the growth (Fig. 4).
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