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ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil Advance Access originally published online on May 18, 2008
ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil 2008 65(6):963-969; doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsn079
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© 2008 International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. Published by Oxford Journals. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Bathymetric preferences of juvenile European hake (Merluccius merluccius)

Valerio Bartolino1, Alessandro Ottavi2, Francesco Colloca1, Gian Domenico Ardizzone1 and Gunnar Stefánsson3

1 Department of Animal and Human Biology, University of Rome "La Sapienza", viale dell’Università, 32, 00185 Rome, Italy
2 Department of Statistics, Probability and Applied Statistics, University of Rome "La Sapienza", piazzale Aldo Moro, 5, 00185 Rome, Italy
3 Department of Mathematics, University of Iceland, Dunhagi, 5, 107 Reykjavík, Iceland

Correspondence to V. Bartolino: tel: +39 0649914763; fax: +39 064958259; e-mail: valerio.bartolino{at}uniroma1.it

Bartolino, V., Ottavi, A., Colloca, F., Ardizzone, G. D., and Stefánsson, G. 2008. Bathymetric preferences of juvenile European hake (Merluccius merluccius). – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 65: 963–969.

The concept of a recruit is a basic notion in fisheries science, but it is still far from being an unequivocal term, and many diverse, even ambiguous, definitions can be found in the literature. We propose a more objective and biologically meaningful way to define the length range of recruits for species that have clear bathymetric segregation during the early stages of their life cycle. The bathymetric distribution of juvenile European hake was studied by fitting a thin plate spline to data from the national autumn trawl survey. Hake showed a stable pattern of depth preference in the 6-year dataset examined. Small hake had the greatest preference for depths of 170–220 m and appeared to move slightly deeper when they reached 10-cm total length. Larger hake persisted on the continental shelf with a preference for water 70–100 m deep, especially when they reached 18–20 cm long. The length at migration was defined as the length at which the minimum depth preference was shown, and it ranged between 13.2 and 15.8 cm depending on the year. There was a relationship between length at and depth of migration, and we provide a full description of the depth preference of juvenile hake, and test the effectiveness of the analytical approach used.

Keywords: bathymetric distribution, hake, recruit, thin plate spline

Received 1 October 2007; accepted 12 April 2008; advance access publication 18 May 2008.


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