Length-weight Relationship, Fulton’s Condition Factor and Meat Yield of Atlantic Bonito, Sarda sarda (Bloch, 1793) in the Central Black Sea

A total of 271 Atlantic bonitos from the Black Sea were collected from commercial gillnet and purse-seine fisheries, which have especially landed at Sinop fishing ports between September 2016 and December 2016. Length and weight of Atlantic bonito specimens were ranged from 15.4 cm to 47.6 cm (average: 34.6 ± 0.38 cm), and 72 g to 1288.8 g (average: 506.7 ±19 g). The LWR equation calculated was W = 0.0028 × TL3.3763 (R2= 0.9744). Meat yield ratio was ranged from 42.2% to 79.7% (average: 69%). Fulton’s condition factors were ranged from 0.816 to 1.972 (average: 1.066 ±0.008). The results seem that the populations of Atlantic bonitos in the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara have quite large size and good conditions in terms of Lmax, Wmax and a and b values. Additionally, K value increased in bigger fish than >36 cm in this study. However, MLS with 25 cm is also unreasonable due to the reported of 42.5 cm for females and 37 cm for males in a previous study. In this study, only 1.5% under legal size is due to MLS with 25 cm. Whereas, MLS should be increased owing to first maturity length, and should be implemented new MLS with at least 40 cm for sustainable bonito fishery.