| No | Arguments | Refutations |
| 5.1 | Von Bertalanffy’s hypothesis of a surface-limiting fish growth (which is a key element of the GOLT) is wrong because the absorptive surface area of the gut is not in permanent contact with food (162, 163). | Von Bertalanffy (19–24) did not commit himself to stating that the surface-limiting growth was that of the gut. He thought that “the actual surface responsible for growth of an organism is in general unknown” (20). However, he clearly favored a link to respiration (albeit without explicitly mentioning gill surface area). |
| 5.2 | The claim was also made that “apparently, it was overlooked that although catabolic processes are going on all over the body, the necessary oxygen supply has to be introduced through some surface or the other, mainly the gills. With our basic assumption of isometric growth, this 2/3 means that catabolism is proportional to w2/3” (82). | This was not overlooked. In the GOLT, the catabolic processes “going on all over the body” do not require oxygen. They consist of the (temperature dependent) spontaneous denaturation (equal to loss of the quaternary structure) of protein molecules. This process is proportional to weight; the denatured proteins must be resynthesized, which requires ATP and hence O2. However, this is part of anabolism, not catabolism. |
| 5.3 | Another claim (164) was “…anabolism is proportional to the area of the circulatory network rather than to gill surface area (35).” | If this were correct, then the scaling factor of anabolism to weight in fish and invertebrates would always be 0.75. This, however, is emphatically not the case (15, 16, 165). |
| 5.4 | A critique (166) of (7) included “Methodological shortcomings include (i) assimilated consumption (the ‘anabolic’ part of the growth equation) is assumed to be proportional to oxygen, but oxygen is only a limiting factor for growth not a controlling factor, i.e. it only affect growth if the oxygen concentration is below a critical value (167).” | The response (7) was that “[w]hile Brander et al. cite Brett (167) to suggest that oxygen is a limiting factor for growth, and not a controlling factor, there is abundant theoretical and empirical support in the peer- reviewed literature for oxygen being both a limiting and controlling factor for the growth of fish and aquatic invertebrates.” (14, 93, 168–172). |