FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 72, NO. 3 



Table 2. — Monthly distributions of silver hake eggs arranged by transect-groups. 

 Monthly peak abundance for each group indicated by bold type, ns = not sampled. 



production of eggs is released in a first batch, and 

 the second half is divided between second and 

 third batches. Our egg collections on the shelf 

 south of Montauk Point and Martha's Vineyard 

 (transects A and B in Table 2) are consistent with 

 their conclusion. We collected 1,362 eggs in June, 

 the remainder during August (415), September 

 (617), and October (454). 



The silver hake eggs collected during our 1966 

 cruises originated principally over Nantucket 

 Shoals and on the continental shelf south of 

 Martha's Vineyard. We collected 889c of the eggs 

 on the two northernmost transects, 77% on the 

 Martha's Vineyard transect alone. Sauskan and 

 Serebryakov (1968) found concentrations south of 

 Martha's Vineyard in May, on the southern slopes 

 of Georges Bank in June. Thus, this area probably 

 is an important silver hake spawning center. 

 Small, distinct spawning groups are also located 

 near Hudson Canyon, on the deeper parts of the 

 shelf off New Jersey, and further south off Dela- 

 ware, Maryland, and Virginia. The small num- 

 bers of eggs collected in the latter areas probably 

 reflect the small numbers of adults occurring 

 there. 



Silver hake eggs are found in as wide a range 



of temperatures as the adults. The relation be- 

 tween numbers of eggs collected and surface tem- 

 peratures is shown in Table 3. This may be 

 misleading however, for we observed egg concen- 

 trations in a particular geographic area (south of 

 Martha's Vineyard and Montauk Point) and these 

 concentrations were apparently independent of 

 prevailing surface temperatures which ranged 

 from 13.5° to 21.7°C. It is not known how near 

 the bottom silver hake spawn, nor in what range 

 of temperatures. Assuming they spawn near the 

 bottom, the wide temperature range of egg occur- 

 rences might be due to a wide range of tempera- 

 tures in the spawning areas or might simply be 

 the result of extreme temperature ranges in sur- 

 face waters over the spawning areas, in which case 

 the ascending eggs demonstrate a wide tempera- 

 ture tolerance. 



Distribution of Larvae 



Larval distributions are shown in Appendix 

 Table 1 and Figures 4 through 8. We collected 

 11,032 silver hake larvae from May to December 

 1966, 91% during August, September, and Octo- 

 ber (Table 4). We captured no postlarvae larger 



Table 3. — Abundance of silver hake eggs relative to observed surface temperatures. 



Surface 



temperature 



(X) 



1-10 

 eggs 



Number of tows which collected; 



11-100 

 eggs 



101-200 

 eggs 



200 + 

 eggs 



Total 

 number 

 of tows 



6 

 6 

 2 

 3 

 4 

 4 

 5 

 2 



32 



1 



1 



6 



28 



21 



15 



15 



8 



8 



11 



9 



1 



124 



822 



