Moser and Pommeranz: Distribution of eggs and larvae of Engraulis mordax 



921 



just shoreward of the inshore 

 MESSHAI site. 



This paper presents a pre- 

 hminary analysis of the fine- 

 scale vertical distribution of 

 anchovy eggs and lai-vae and 

 the larvae of other taxa, with 

 comparisons of the offshore 

 and inshore sites and of the 

 prestorm and poststorm peri- 

 ods at the inshore site. A sepa- 

 rate paper addressing age-spe- 

 cific vertical distribution and 

 mortality of anchovy eggs and 

 larvae is in preparation. 



Methods and materials 



34 00 



33 30 



33°00' 



Cruise 8003-EB Stations 



27 March, 1980 



29 March-6 April, 1980 



Cruise 8003-EB was conducted 

 aboard RV Ellen B. Scripps at 

 two sampling sites in the 

 Southern California Bight 

 (SCB; Fig. 1). The first site 32°3o' 

 (33°11.1'N, 118°16.5'W), occu- 

 pied 19-27 March 1980, was 

 located 13 km south of the east 

 end of Santa Catalina Island, 

 over an -1150 m bottom depth. 

 This site lies over the Santa 



Catalina Basin, one of 13 deep basins that charac- 

 terize the offshore region of southern California 

 (Ebeling et al., 1970; Eppley 1986). The midwater 

 fish fauna of these basins is a mix of subarctic, tran- 

 sitional species of the California Current and spe- 

 cies from the eastern tropical Pacific and central 

 water masses whose distributions extend into the 

 region. The site is close enough to Santa Catalina 

 Island to have larvae of shelf species (Hobson and 

 Chess, 19761 in addition to larvae of slope and basin 

 floor species ( Cross, 1987 ). The second site ( 33"28.5'N, 

 117°47.0'W), occupied 29 March-6 April 1980, was 

 -4.5 km off Dana Point, over the upper continental 

 slope at approximately 430 m bottom depth. Here 

 the adjacent shelf narrows to a minimum of about 3 

 km but supports rich fish communities associated 

 with rocky reefs and kelp forests (Feder et al., 1974; 

 Cross and Allen, 1993) and soft-bottom habitats 

 (Meams, 1979; Love et al., 1986; Allen and Herbinson, 

 1991; Cross and Allen, 1993). The continental slope, 

 also relatively narrow here, supports a fish assem- 

 blage typical of other southern California slope re- 

 ^gions (Cross, 1987). The first site corresponds to Cali- 

 fornia Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations 

 (CalCOFI) station 90.2, 35.8 and the second to sta- 



ll?" 



San Diego 



Figure 1 



The Southern California Bight, showing stations occupied on Cruise 8003-EB (modi- 

 fied from Shepard and Emery, 1941). 



tion 90.0, 28.2. Sampling at the offshore station was 

 interrupted twice by heavy seas (0055, 21 March to 

 0908, 23 March; and 1730, 26 March to 0836, 27 

 March ). A storm with associated heavy seas curtailed 

 sampling at the inshore site at 0315, 1 April; the sta- 

 tion was reoccupied at 0655, 3 April. 



The principal samplers used were the Manta net 

 (Brown and Cheng, 1981) for sampling the surface 

 layer (0-15.5 cm) and the MESSHAI for sampling 

 discrete depth strata in the upper 200 m. The 

 MESSHAI sampler was a modified Gulf-V sampler 

 (Arnold, 1959; Nellen and Hempel, 1969) with a 

 25x25 cm mouth opening, six opening and closing 

 nets operated from a computer deck unit, and an 

 environmental sensing package (Pommeranz and 

 Moser, 1987). All nets were fitted with 300-^m mesh. 

 A sampling sequence for a day or night station con- 

 sisted of a five-minute Manta tow, followed by an 

 oblique MESSHAI tow that sampled 10-m strata 

 from 50 m to the surface, an oblique MESSHAI tow 

 which sampled 40-m strata from 200 m to the sur- 

 face, a second MESSHAI tow which sampled 10-m 

 strata from 50 m to the surface, and a second Manta 

 tow. A total of 17 Manta tows ( 10 day, 7 night) were 

 taken at the offshore station, 24 (13 day, 11 night) at 



