Abstract
This study aims to suggest the methodology to improve to estimate back-calculated fish growth parameters using weighted average. It is to contribute to correct errors in the calculation of back-calculated growth equation with unequal numbers of sample by age. If the numbers of sample were evenly collected by age, each back-calculated length at age was equal between arithmetic and weighted averages. However, most samples cannot be evenly collected by age in reality because of different catchability by fishing gear and limitation of environment condition. Therefore, the estimation of back-calculated length by weighted average method is essential to calculate growth parameters. There were some published growth equations from back-calculated length using a simple arithmetic average with different numbers of samples by age when searching for back-calculated growth equations from 91 relevant papers. In this study, the process of deriving growth equation was investigated and two different average calculations were applied to a fish growth equation, for example of Acheilognathus signifer. Growth parameters, such as $L_{\infty}$, k and $t_0$, were estimated from two different back-calculated averages and the growth equations were compared with growth performance index. Based on the correction of back-calculated length using weighted average by age, the changes by female and male were -14.19% and -5.23% for $L_{\infty}$, and 59.28% and 18.91% for k, respectively. The corrected growth performance index by weighted average improved at 7.05% and 2.46% by female and male, respectively, compared to the arithmetic averages.
