Assessing growth of Northeast Arctic cod by a bioenergetics model

Abstract

This paper represents an attempt to elucidate how fish body size differences and metabolic costs alter the relationship between growth and consumption using a bioenergetics model. The results show that the daily growth increments of Northeast Arctic cod are considerably reduced when the consumption is adjusted for metabolism and activity cost. Consequently, the cost of the standard metabolism, specific dynamic action, swimming activity, spawning losses, egestion and excretion must be first covered before any energy is available for growth. Otherwise, individual growth rate is overestimated with extremely high food conversion efficiency.