184 



Fishery Bulletin 98(1) 



important factors or combinations of factors, or with 

 both. For example, age-0 inquihne snailfish (L. inqui- 

 linus) are found almost exclusively in association 

 with the presence of sea scallops, with which they 

 have their inquiline relationship (Able and Musick, 

 1976). The distribution of these fishes on the mid 

 to outer shelf is therefore not necessarily directly 

 affected by any physiological response to depth or 

 distance offshore; rather, they are probably most 

 affected by their dependence on sea scallops for shel- 

 ter. The distribution of scallops in turn may be 

 affected by such variables as temperature, salinity, 

 circulation pattern, and the production of phyto- 

 plankton (Stewart and Arnold, 1994). Temperature, 

 however, may have a direct effect on the quality of 

 habitat for a given species because many physiologi- 

 cal functions such as respiration, metabolism, and 

 growth are directly controlled by changes in temper- 

 ature (Neill etal., 1994). 



Temperature and depth not only seem to provide 

 the best description of the overall variance within 

 this data set, but, along with salinity and time of 

 year, form the basis for the hydrographic descrip- 

 tion of the NYB. In general, the bottom waters of 



Table 7 



Weighted correlations between the five environmental vari- 

 ables selected during the CCA with forward selection and 

 the axes of from the analysis. Numbers in bold indicate the 

 strongest correlation for each of the four axes. See Table 2 

 for meaning of environmental variable codes 



Axis 



Temp 



Scall 



Long Marg 



CCA 1 0.8262 



CCA 2 0.4932 



CCA 3 -0.0819 



CCA 4 0.0863 



0.4257 

 -0.7895 



0.1485 

 -0.3690 



-0.0796 

 1636 

 0.9711 



-0.1399 



0.3723 0.6508 



-0.2067 -0.5973 



-0.0620 0.1028 



-0.8822 -0.0934 



the NYB can be broken down by location into three 

 regions: inner-shelf waters, middle shelf (cold pool), 

 and outer shelf. This breakdown of the continental 

 shelf for the NYB is consistent with that of other 

 shelf systems (McRoy et al., 1986; Werner et al., 

 1997). During the summer, waters overlaying these 

 regions of the shelf are divided by two frontal fea- 

 tures: the inner front, dividing the inner and middle 



