Pauly, D. 1981. The relationships between gill surface area and growth performance in fish: a generalization of von Bertalanffy’s theory of growth. Berichte der Deutschen Wissenchaftlichen Kommission für Meeresforschung

1he present paper is an attempt to interpret some of the data on fish growth available in the literature, emphasis beiI1g given to a reassessment of von Bertalanffy's theory of growth as applied to fishes. In that theory, grQwth is defined as the net result of twO processes with opposite teI)dencies, one synth¢sizing native protein (anabolism), the other ~egrading it (catabolism). Both food and 'oxygen supply are needed for arHtb9E.sm, and this investigation presents evidence suggesting that, udish'es; it is primarly oxygen rather than food supply which limits anabolism and hence growth. This is due chiefly to the facts that fishes cannot store but small amounts of oxygen, and that the respiratory area of fishes (the gills) cannot grow as fast as ijody weight. The latter feature has the effect that relative gill area (= gill surface area/body ~eight) always decreases with increasing body weight~whichitself results in a lowered fobd conversion efficiency with increasing body weight. It is shown that, as a rule, fishes that are able to reach a very large size (e. g., bluefin tuna) tend to have gills growing in proportion to a pd'wer of weight quite close to unity (0.90) while small fishes (e. g., guppy) have gills growing in proportion to a power of weight of !l\ or less. [fhe von Bertalanffy Growth Formula (VBGF). the derivation of which is based on thdassumption of the universal validity of the <1/ j rule' is therefore considered to be a spelcial case of a geheralized formula (the <generalized VBGF') whose properties and applications are discussed.