. 20 30 AGE IN YEARS Text-fig. 59. Dynamic survival curve for female fin whales. See text for method of construction. Growth curves The relation between length and corpora number for area 11 females has already been discussed (Table 6, Text-fig. 25). The average length at physical maturity was there taken to be 73 ft., which was the average length of 187 females which had more than 20 corpora in the ovaries. Nishiwaki, Ichihara and Osumi (1958) suggest that after the attainment of physical maturity there is a slight decrease in body length and the present material also suggests this, although
. 20 30 AGE IN YEARS Text-fig. 59. Dynamic survival curve for female fin whales. See text for method of construction. Growth curves The relation between length and corpora number for area 11 females has already been discussed (Table 6, Text-fig. 25). The average length at physical maturity was there taken to be 73 ft., which was the average length of 187 females which had more than 20 corpora in the ovaries. Nishiwaki, Ichihara and Osumi (1958) suggest that after the attainment of physical maturity there is a slight decrease in body length and the present material also suggests this, although the shrinkage is evidently slight and there is no statistical support for it. The relative growth curve in Text-fig. 25 was, therefore, fitted to the average lengths at different corpora numbers so that it attained 73 ft. at 14-3 corpora. This smoothed curve may be converted to a length-at-age curve in the same way as the age structure of a sample was obtained (p. 466). The lengths corresponding to 1-43, 2-86, 4-29 corpora, etc., are equivalent to post-pubertal ages of about \ year, i\ years, 2\ years, etc., and as before an additional 5 years is added to allow for the immature period (Table 33).
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