an economically important shellfish species in southern China. However, intensive culture practices have resulted in genetic degradation (e.g., inbreeding depression). In addition, there has been a recent increase in the mass mortality of during the post-larval and grow-out stages, resulting in a decrease in production. To address this, genetic improvement is likely to play an important role in the sustainable development of the aquaculture industry. Narrow-sense heritability(h²) provides an index of additive genetic variation. The index is a key indicator of the degree of genetic improvement in an unknown natural population with putative commercial value. We estimated the heritability of shell length, shell width, and body weight of by means of intra group correlation of full-sibs.Twelve half-sib families and thirty-six full-sib families of were obtained by artificial fertilization of three females by single males based on an unbalanced nest design. Each full-sib family was reared separately and all families experienced environmental conditions that were as similar as possible. A random sample of 30 individuals from each family was harvested and the shell length, shell width, and body weight of each individual was measured 40, 120, 180, and 240 days after hatching (dph). The genetic parameters for shell length, shell width, and body weight were estimated with a single trait animal model using the restricted maximum likelihood method. The estimates of narrow-sense heritabilities ranged from 0.13±0.09 to 0.56±0.15 for shell length and 0.13±0.06−0.62±0.13 for shell width. The heritability of body weight was between 0.18±0.15 and 0.26±0.08. We observed a significant positive genetic and phenotypic correlation (correlation coefficient ranges: 0.85–0.98 and 0.66–0.94, respectively)among shell length, shell width, and body weight. Our results suggest anyone of the three growth traits can be targeted for selection to improve growth in .