Age, growth and reproduction of the gold band goatfish, Upeneus moluccensis off the Elkhoms coast of Libya

The age, growth parameters, spawning season, sex ratio, length at first sexual maturity and
fecundity of the goldband goatfish, Upeneus moluccensis (Bleeker, 1855) caught in Elkhoms
coasts of the Mediterranean Sea were investigated. It was found that, males constitute about
47.7% its population. Length-weight relationship of both sexes was illustrated as:
W = 0.01017 L3.01 for males and
W = 0.00822 L3.09 for females
The age data derived from scale readings were used to estimate the growth parameters of the
von Bertalanffy equation and the calculated parameters were:
L∞= 233.6 mm, K = 0.2274 and to = -1.872 for males and
L∞= 234.4 mm, K =0.2120 and to = -1.983 for females
It was found that the maximum age of males and females attained five years only. The second
year age group was dominated the population. Otherwise, maturation of males and females
occurred at a total length of about 11 cm. The monthly values of the gonado-somatic index
indicated that spawning of the studied fish take place mainly between May and July. The
fecundity-length relationship designated that the fecundity is highly correlated with the fish
length and expressed by the equation:
Log F = 0.0268 + 3.8120 Log L (r = 0.995).
INTRODUCTION
The