ROHR and GUTHERZ: BIOLOGY OF MERLUCCIUS ALB1DUS 

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86° 



FIGURE 1.— Northeastern section of the Gulf of Mexico showing stations on De Soto Canyon slope north of Tampa, Fla., made during the 

 June 1971 finfish survey and the Mississippi Delta slope; insert of entire Gulf of Mexico identifying all stations between 1950 and 1971 

 where the catch rate of Merluccius albidus exceeded 14 kg/h. 



SS t = the computed standing stock 

 estimates for each area. 



Confidence intervals were calculated using the 

 weighted pooled variance method described by 

 Snedecor and Cochran (1967): 



S~ / w? s, 2 /n, 



'tot 



(2) 



where Si == standard error of the mean 



not 



x tot = mean density (kilograms/hectare) 



weighted by area 

 w t = weighting factor based on sample 



size, i.e., w t = nJN 

 s t 2 = variance of density estimate for ith 



stratum. 



The weighted pooled variance was used to re- 

 duce the variation associated with different sam- 

 ple sizes within each stratum. 



DISTRIBUTION AND ABUNDANCE 



The range of M. albidus in the western Atlantic 

 extends from lat. 41°N off Georges Bank (Bigelow 

 and Schroeder 1955) to the Orinoco Delta and 

 possibly to the vicinity of Rio de Janeiro (Cervigon 

 1966). Bigelow and Schroeder (1955) reported a 

 depth range of 92 to 1,170 m for M. albidus on the 

 New England slope with approximately 75% of the 

 population residing in depths of 185 to 550 m. 

 Merluccius albidus are seldom caught by com- 

 mercial hake fishermen in New England (Fritz 



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