swordfish, Xiphias gladius L., 1758, in the eastern Mediterranean using anal-fin spines

University of Crete, Department of Biology P.O. Box 1470. 711 10 Iraklion, Greece in anal-fin spines used for age determination ofswordfish are deposited annually. Because Ehrhardt (1992) reported that the von Bertalanffy growth function did not adequately represent swordfish growth, we propose a second objective, namely to compare the growth function proposed by Ehrhardt (1992) with the standard von Bertalanffy model for representing growth of Mediterranean swordfish.