FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 71, NO. 2 



Figure 10. — Distribution of sand lance larvae in four 

 length groups from the May cruise. 



patches inshore; further south (Figure 9), they 

 extended 20 to 40 miles offshore. During May, 

 specimens larger than 31 mm made up half 

 of those collected (Figure 10). Off southern 

 New England and New York, they were off- 

 shore, while along the New Jersey coast they 

 were found close to shore. Their distribution, 

 particularly off Long Island, correlated with 

 that of greatest plankton volumes (Clark et al., 

 1969). Few larvae larger than 30 mm were 

 collected in deep water tows either at night 

 or in the daytime. In shallow tows in April 

 and May, the lesser abundance of large larvae 

 by day than at night probably resulted from net 

 avoidance (Table 4). 



CONCLUSIONS 



Sand lances between lat 35° and 41 °N had a 

 long spawning season — from late November to 

 late March. Because larvae became dispersed 

 throughout a large area over a protracted 

 period, the precise location and depth of major 

 spawning areas along the coastal zone were 

 difficult to determine. Nevertheless, it appeared 

 that spawning location was greatly influenced 

 by coastal topography in this region. The great- 

 est numbers of recently hatched individuals 

 occurred in late fall and early winter inshore 

 off southern New England, and Delaware and 

 Chesapeake Bays. In former years within these 

 estuarine regions, spawning occurred in Long 

 Island Sound (Wheatland, 1956; Richards, 

 1959), Narragansett Bay (Herman, 1963), and 

 Delaware Bay (de Sylva et al., 1962), but 

 apparently neither in Block Island Sound (Mer- 

 riman and Sclar, 1952) nor inside Chesapeake 

 Bay (Norcross et al., 1961). Judging by our 

 collection of recently hatched individuals in 

 some offshore areas, spawning must occur both 

 offshore and inshore. 



Evidence indicated that complicated move- 

 ments occurred during development of larval 

 sand lances. Hatched from demersal eggs (Wil- 

 liams et al., 1964), eventually larvae were 

 dispersed throughout the water column, where 

 they drifted generally offshore and slightly 

 south. Within this general drift, they tended 

 to move toward the surface during the day 

 for feeding purposes and back into deeper water 

 at night. Their availability to the Gulf V sampler 



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