FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 74, NO. 4 



African ichthyoplankton available there. 

 Identifications of larvae were more complete than 

 those of eggs, as is usual in work of this kind. 



Among the eggs the following kinds, which are 

 well known in literature because of conspicuous 

 characters, were easily identified: Sardina, En- 

 graiilis, Maurolicus, and Soleidae. 



The eggs of Sardina and Sardinops are alike but 

 the only species of either genus recorded off 

 northwest Africa is Sardina pilchardus 

 (Walbaum). Sardina pilchardus occurs off south- 

 western Europe, in the Mediterranean, and on the 

 coast of northwest Africa as far south as lat. 20°N 

 (de Buen 1937; Larraneta 1960; Maurin 1968; 

 Furnestin and Furnestin 1970). We identify the 

 eggs as that species, which we later call "sardine." 

 Egg diameters in our material range from 1.33 to 

 1.50 mm (mean 1.46 mm), slightly lower than those 

 of the same species in the Mediterranean (1.40 to 

 1.70 mm; Larraneta 1960). However they are 

 considerably larger than those of Sardinella, the 

 other clupeid genus that might occur, whose eggs 

 measure 1.1 to 1.3 mm off west Africa (Marchal 

 1967). 



Engraulid eggs were easily recognizable by 

 their oval shape. Two species of Engraulidae have 

 been reported off southern Spanish Sahara, En- 

 graulis encrasicholus (Linnaeus) and Anchoa 

 guineensis (Rossignol and Blache) (Lozano Cabo 

 1970; Bravo de Laguna Cabrera and Santaella 

 Alvarez 1973). No adults were obtained during 

 JOINT-L so identification has been made from the 

 eggs. Eggs of E. encrasicholus range from 0.90 to 

 1.9 mm in length and 0.42 to 1.2 mm in maximum 

 breadth (Demir 1963); corresponding ranges for A. 

 guineensis are 1.05 to 1.23 and 0.54 to 0.58 mm, 

 respectively (Marchal 1966), and for our material 

 1.33 to 1.50 and 0.50 to 0.58 mm, respectively. Our 

 eggs could belong to either species as far as 

 breadth is concerned, but only to E. encrasicholus 

 on the basis of length. We refer to this species later 

 as "anchovy." It occurs off western Europe and in 

 the Mediterranean and Black seas, as well as off 

 northwest Africa, where its southern limit is not 

 exactly known (de Buen 1931 and references 

 above). 



The eggs of Maurolicus (family Gonostoma- 

 tidae) are those of M. muelleri (Gmelin), which has 

 been recorded off southern Morocco and northern 

 Mauritania (Maurin et al. 1970). The eggs of 

 Soleidae could belong to several species recorded 

 off Spanish Sahara (Maurin et al. 1970; Lozano 

 Cabo 1970). 



The carangid eggs were identified with help 

 from E. H. Ahlstrom, who noted that some of them 

 resembled Trachurus. They measured about 0.9 to 

 1.0 mm, in the size range reported for T. trachurus 

 (Linnaeus) off northwest Africa (Kiliachenkova 

 1970). Three other species of Trachurus have been 

 recorded off northwest Africa, namely T. pictura- 

 tus (Bowdich), T. trecae Cadenat, and T. mediter- 

 raneus Steindachner. Trachurus picturatus is not 

 common and T. mediterraneus may be a sub- 

 species of T. trachurus (Letaconnoux 1951; Mau- 

 rin et al. 1970; Witzell 1973). The three mostcommon 

 carangids in the area of Figure 1 are T. trachurus, 

 T. trecae, and Caranx rhonchus Geoffroy St. 

 Hilaire. The first two spawn off Spanish Sahara 

 from about November to April, and C. rhonchus 

 from about May to August (Boely et al. 1973). 

 Aboussouan (1967) and Conand and Franqueville 

 (1973) described larvae of these species. The 

 distinctions between larvae of Trachurus and C. 

 rhonchus are slight and the larvae of the two 

 Trachurus species cannot be distinguished. Most 

 of our carangid eggs are probably Trachurus 

 ("horse mackerel"), which was abundant along the 

 coast of Spanish Sahara between March and June 

 1974. The most likely species is T. trachurus. All 

 specimens of Trachurus taken in research 

 trawling during JOINT-I were that species. We 

 took 22 post-larval and juvenile Trachurus up to 6 

 cm long in various hauls of a micronekton net 

 during JOINT-I. All specimens large enough to be 

 identified were T. trachurus. We identified caran- 

 gid eggs conservatively and so may have failed to 

 count some. 



The remaining eggs, 36% of the total, were of 

 several kinds not readily identifiable by us. 

 Probably few of them were eggs of pelagic species, 

 except possibly some carangids as suggested 

 above. They lacked segmented yolks and thus were 

 probably not Isospondyli. Scomber japonicus 

 Houttuyn is a pelagic species that spawns mostly 

 from December to February in the vicinity of Cap 

 Blanc (references in Blackburn 1975). If Scomber 

 eggs occurred in our collections, they were prob- 

 ably not abundant. We found no Scomber larvae. 

 Other abundant pelagic species of the JOINT-I 

 area spawn principally in summer (Blackburn 

 1975). Thus unidentified eggs probably were 

 mostly demersal species, as were 25% of larvae, i.e., 

 Heterosomata and Sparidae, as shown in Table 2. 

 Spatial distribution of unidentified eggs resem- 

 bled that of the demersal larvae (Figure 5G, H). 



All larvae were identified to some taxon. Closer 



890 



