A simple silver nitrate technique was used to stain whole vertebrae from 547 brown rays, Raja miraletus, caught by trawling off the Mediterranean costs of Alexandria between June 1990 and July 1991. From the validation techniques, the analysis of marginal increments was selected. A single annulus forms each year on the vertebrae. The annual nature of the rings was demonstrated by correlation with length-frequency analysis for the years 1988-1991. Counts of growth rings from vertebral centra stained with silver nitrate were employed to back calculate length at age for the size range 18-70 cm TL. The growth of R. miraletus was described by a von Bertalanffy growth curve with parameters k = 0.19, t0 = –0.50 and L∞ = 87.87 for males and k = 0.17, t0 = –0.25 and L∞ = 91.92 for females. Low value of growth rate and moderate life span are characteristic of this species.