Abstract
This study addresses the growth dynamics of three size groups of juveniles graded from the same wild cohort of the Mediterranean blue mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis. Each size group was replicated and cultured independently from the others in culture bags suspended from a specific longline system devised for this task. The small size group of mussels showed an unexpected higher growth rate SGR (0.95 ± 0.07) than the intermediate size group (0.41 ± 0.08) or the large size group (0.32 ± 0.10) from the beginning of the experiment. Nevertheless, all three size groups grew more slowly with time and the initially large size group was conspicuously and significantly larger than the rest of size groups at the end of the experiment. Early selection of fast growers by grading on shell length is a straightforward approach to accelerate the fattening period. Speeding up harvest can be a natural tool to skip upwelling episodic blooms of toxic microalgae or to improve the final stock performance of cultured blue mussels.
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