Croissance de la dorade, Pagellus Centrodontus DELAROCHE

Although it does not reach the large tonnages of some Nordic gadidae, nor the high flows of so-called "noble" fish such as hake or sole, sea bream, Pagellus centrodontus Delaroche, occupies an important place in French wet-fishing. Among traditional demersal species of the Gulf of Gascony taken in the widest sense, which is to say including the sea beds of northern Spain and the southern Celtic shelf, it is in fourth place from the point of view of total intake value. Only hake, angler and sole have larger total value. The tonnage that it represents for French ports on the Atlantic was 3,600 tonnes in 1955; it came close to 5,800 tonnes in 1959 and has stayed steady at about 5,200 tonnes for the last few years. A close look at the overall statistics shows that even if a few variations appear in the landed weights, these do not decrease in an appreciable way as they do with other fish, particularly hake. It would be worthwhile, for all these reasons, to study the sea bream to determine whether it can be subjected to more intense exploitation or whether, on the contrary, conservation measures should be considered on its behalf. There is currently no research on the dynamics of this fish. Even its growth is poorly understood: although for Morocco it is possible to consult the study done by COUPE in 1954, for the European Atlantic, only OLIVIER (1928) until the last few years seemed to have studied this question, performing a ring count on 331 scales. He made it clear that it was a preliminary study that should be continued. More recently, Spanish researchers (RAMOS and CENDRERO, 1967) undertook research on the biology of Pagellus centrodontus, but as yet nothing has been published and only preliminary results have been the subject of a paper presented at the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. There are therefore many problems left to resolve; we intend first of all to clarify that of growth.