Observations of growth and postspawning survival of lumpfish Cyclopterus lumpus from mark-recapture studies.

Growth and postspawning survival of lumpfish Cyclopterus lumpus are described by mark-recapture experiments using juveniles in offshore areas in the north-east Atlantic Ocean and spawning adults in coastal Norway and Iceland. A female fish tagged as a juvenile and recaptured as an adult matured in a period of 18 months, providing the first observation on development in a wild C. lumpus. The von Bertalanffy growth function, fitted to data from recaptured fish, was used to estimate K and L∞ and recaptured fish spawning after a year at liberty indicated a postspawning survival of c. 10% in Iceland.