from mid- April through June each year to arrive at 

 a general value for the spring buildup and peak. Al- 

 though such values do not indicate the maximal 

 glycogen values, which may be reached either gradu- 

 ally or quickly in any of those months, an average 

 better enables year-to-year comparisons. Data for 

 collections from late November through February 

 were similarly averaged to obtain a value for the 

 postspawning winter period of low muscle glycogen. 

 We used this same parameter for specimens col- 

 lected from random sites in the Gulf of Maine, and 

 found a different seasonal pattern in scallops from 

 depths greater than ca. 110 m. Because these deep- 

 water sea scallops came from many different sites 

 in the Gulf of Maine, data were averaged for each 

 collection date for each site. This report presents 

 our data for spring and winter adductor muscle 

 glycogen in a single subtital sea scallop population 

 for the years 1981-84, and in deepwater sea scallops 

 from the Gulf of Maine for 1980-82. 



Materials and Methods 



Asbury Park sea scallops were collected by trawl 

 from a site 31m deep on the southern shelf of the 

 Hudson River Canyon off Asbury Park, approx- 

 imately 37 km NNE of Manasquan Inlet (ca. 40° 13' 

 X 73° 47'). Collections were made at monthly inter- 

 vals from spring 1981 through late July 1984 and 

 during two intensive weekly sampling periods from 

 early May through mid- June in 1983 and 1984, to 

 monitor the spring buildup of muscle glycogen. For 

 some months, particularly in the spring of 1982, 

 collections were not available. Each collection 

 comprised 6 males and 6 females (shell height 

 95-110 mm). The sea scallops were held overnight 

 in 5°C aerated seawater at the Northeast Fisheries 

 Center's (NEFC) laboratory at Sandy Hook, NJ, and 



transported the following day in a cooler to the 

 Milford, CT, NEFC laboratory. For transport, the 

 sea scallops were placed on top of paper toweling 

 that had been soaked in seawater, then wrung out 

 and layered over ice enclosed in a sealed plastic bag. 

 The animals were dissected the same day, and all 

 tissue specimens were stored at -80°C until test- 

 ing, (jonad volumes were also noted. Deepwater sea 

 scallops were dissected on shipboard immediately 

 after collection by trawl, and the muscle tissue held 

 at -40°C while at sea, then transferred on dry ice 

 to the -80°C freezer in Milford. Because we relied 

 on volunteer help for many of these collections, 

 gonad data were not always available for shipboard 

 samples of adductor muscle from deepwater sea 

 scallops. 



Muscle dissection, tissue preparation, and the pro- 

 cedure for glycogen analysis are described in detail 

 elsewhere (Gould et al. 1985); glycogen levels are 

 presented as /ig of glucose per gram of wet tissue 

 (pig g"0- Because there were no detectable differ- 

 ences between sexes for muscle glycogen levels, 

 data for males and females were combined. 



Results and Discussion 



Asbury Park Sea Scallops 



In the spring of 1981, the Asbury Park sea scallops 

 had muscle glycogen levels averaging higher than 

 2,000 fig g"^ (Table 1). Such levels are not uncom- 

 mon in well-fed scallop populations, as observed 

 during several years of monitoring activity on the 

 continental shelf off New England and the mid- 

 Atlantic states (Gould 1981, 1983) during the 

 NEFC's Ocean Pulse/Northeast Monitoring Pro- 

 gram (NEMP) and the NEFC's Resource Assess- 

 ment surveys. The mean annual low levels in the 



Table 1.— Seasonal high and low levels in adductor muscle glycogen for both males and 

 females in a single population of sea scallops off Asbury Park, NJ. Values were averaged 

 for mean seasonal highs during and after spring phytoplankton blooms (April, May, June) and 

 for mean seasonal lows after spawning (December, January, February). Gonad volumes are 

 also shown for the same time periods. 



598 



