Methods Before fitting growth models to the data, an exploratory analy-sis was undertaken to determine an appropriate functional form forthe growth curve for each species. This included calculating an aver-age growth rate (cm/day) for each fish by dividing the differencebetween its recapture length and release length by the number ofdays it was at liberty and plotting against the average of its releaseand recapture length. If fish grow according to a standard VB curve,then the relationship between growth rate and length will be linearwith a negative slope, where the values of the slope and interceptdepend on the length of time at liberty