FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 70, NO. 4 



Table 7. — Total catches of fish larvae (actual counts) taken on EASTROPAC 11 sum- 

 marized by latitude (5° except near equator) and longitude (offshore or inshore). 



Offshore: long 100M19°W 



Inshore: coast to long 98°W 



temperatures. Over 60% of the larger collec- 

 tions of fish larvae (750 or more larvae) were 

 taken at stations with mixed layer temperatures 

 in excess of 26°C and mixed layer depths of 

 35 m or less. 



Unfortunately, information is lacking on the 

 depth distribution of fish larvae in the eastern 

 tropical Pacific in relation to thermocline depth, 

 hence it is not known whether most kinds were 

 limited in depth distribution to the upper mixed 

 layer, as reported for California Current waters 

 (Ahlstrom, 1959). 



KINDS OF FISH LARVAE OBTAINED 

 ON EASTROPAC II 



With some interesting exceptions, the same 

 kinds of larvae were obtained on ETP II as on 

 ETP I, and Table 8, the principal summary table 

 covering ETP II larvae, contains essentially the 

 same families as its counterpart for ETP I. The 

 table lists 53 families and 6 composite categories 

 including 3 orders or suborders and a catchall 

 category — other identified. For the latter, com- 

 position by families is given in subsequent tables 

 or in text discussions. Altogether, fish larvae 

 of 82 families were represented in ETP II col- 

 lections. As on ETP I, larvae of 10 families 

 contributed over 907o (91.0 on ETP II) of the 

 total; 9 of these families were among the first 

 10 on both EASTROPAC surveys and had simi- 

 lar rankings. The first 10 families on ETP II 



were as follows: Myctophidae, 52.0% ; Gonos- 

 tomatidae, 19.7%; Sternoptychidae, 6.0%; 

 Bathylagidae, 4.8%; Bregmacerotidae, 2.5%; 

 Paralepididae, 2.0%; Nomeidae, 1.2%; Melam- 

 phaidae, 1.1%; Engraulidae, 1.1%; and Idia- 

 canthidae, 0.6% . Engraulidae is the only family 

 on this list that did not rank among the first 10 

 on ETP I. The sole displacement from the pre- 

 vious list is the family Scombridae, which 

 slipped in ranking from fifth in ETP I to twen- 

 tieth in ETP II. Of the remaining 9%, 2.3 %o 

 were too damaged (disintegrated) to identify, 

 0.7% could not be identified (these were mostly 

 very small larvae), and the remainder, about 

 6%, belonged to the other 72 families. 



The displacement of Scombridae from among 

 the 10 most abundant families on ETP II left 

 only one perciform family, Nomeidae, among 

 those contributing 1 % or more of the total. Only 

 a moderate number of perciform families have, 

 become widely distributed in off"shore oceanic 

 waters. Among these, larvae of Gempylidae con- 

 tributed 0.3 %r of the total on ETP II; Apogoni- 

 dae, 0.2%; Chiasmodontidae, 0.2% ; Coryphae- 

 nidae, 0.1%; Trichiuridae, 0.1%; and Brami- 

 dae, 0.1%. 



The basic data on the kinds and number of 

 fish larvae obtained in the 355 ETP II collections 

 are contained in Appendix Tables 1 to 6. These 

 are keyed to Table 8 and to other tables in this 

 report. 



The data presented in this paper represent 

 but the first step in utilizing eggs and larvae col- 

 lections for resource evaluation. 



1162 



