Figure 1.— Location of the northern Gulf of Mexico (GOMEX) and its subregions. Studies conducted in waters east of long. 86°00'W 

 are considered northeastern GOMEX, those between 86°00'W and 94°00'W are north-central GOMEX, and west of 94°00'W are 

 northwestern GOMEX. 



off west Florida, and Finucane et al. (1977, 1979b) 

 from the south Texas outer continental shelf. Ditty 

 (1986) presented data on seasonality of larval fishes 

 from neritic continental shelf waters off Louisiana 

 that included a discussion of peak seasonal occur- 

 rence of abundant taxa; however, those data were 

 limited in areal coverage, and there were significant 

 gaps in the temporal occurrence of many taxa. 

 Therefore, data on larvae of approximately 200 

 coastal and oceanic fishes from 61 families were 

 compiled from unpublished plankton surveys\ as 

 well as other published studies from throughout the 

 northern GOMEX, to further clarify the seasonal- 

 ity and peak seasonal occurrence (Table 1), and 

 depth distribution (Table 2) of larval fishes from this 

 area. Since the occurrence of early developmental 

 stages of fishes suggests recent spawning (Colton 

 et al. 1979; Ruple 1984), only studies that primari- 

 ly collected larvae <10 mm SL were used. Because 

 the taxonomy of larvae of many northern GOMEX 

 fishes (e.g., most exocoetids, blennies, and gobies) 

 are poorly understood, no attempt was made to com- 

 pile seasonality or depth distribution data for these 

 taxa or for anguilliform, myctophiform, or salmoni- 

 form fishes; other poorly understood taxa (e.g., en- 



^Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. P.O. Box 

 98000, Baton Rouge, LA 70898-9000. 



graulids and cynoglossids) were assigned only to 

 genus. 



Discussion 



Although not all northern GOMEX ichthyoplank- 

 ton studies were readily comparable because of 

 differences in gear and tow type, plankton net mesh 

 size, and seasonal and areal coverage (Table 3), few 

 major discrepancies in either seasonality or peak 

 seasonal occurrence of larvae resulted from such dif- 

 ferences. For example, Pearson (1929) suggested a 

 secondary spawning from late July to November for 

 black drum off Texas, but these dates have not been 

 reported from elsewhere in the literature. Likewise, 

 Finucane (1976) reported round scad, Decapterus 

 punctatus, <6 mm SL in December-January, but 

 based on sampling at the same location in subse- 

 quent years (Finucane et al. 1977, 1979b) and the 

 seasonal occurrence of this species as suggested by 

 others (Table 1), these may have been larvae of the 

 rough scad, Trachurus lathami, rather than those 

 of round scad. Houde et al. (1979) collected larvae 

 of Spanish sardine, Sardinella aurita, during all 

 months of their Florida continental shelf survey; 

 however, their winter occurrences of Spanish sar- 

 dine were only from the southern part of the survey 

 area (i.e., <26°00'N). This may account for the dis- 



812 



