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Fishery Bulletin 100(2) 



The distribution of the catch-weighted mean ML, by sex, 

 by depth zone, for each season separately is shown in Ta- 

 ble 11. For juvenile L. pealeii, in autumn, at 1-55 m depth, 

 there was little difference in size at depth. In the 56-110 

 m depth zone, juveniles in autumn were considerably larg- 

 er than at shallower depths. In winter, there was evidence 

 for a slight increase in the size of juveniles with increasing 

 depth. In spring survey samples, juveniles were similar in 

 size across the depth range sampled. 



Female and male L. pealeii were generally smaller in 

 the shallowest depth zone (1-26 m, only sampled in au- 

 tumn and spring sui-veys), and much larger at depths 

 greater than 185 m, for each survey. There was no clear 

 pattern for intermediate depths. In autumn surveys, squid 

 were generally smaller at 27-55 m depth than in deeper 



water. In winter and spring, however, squid at this depth 

 were longer than at 56-185 m. The LIS samples showed 

 larger mean sizes for each group at <27 m depth than in 

 autumn and spring samples. 



In the autumn survey, squid of all maturity stages (ex- 

 cept juveniles) were generally largest in the south (MAB) 

 and smallest in the north (SNE and GOM, Table 12). Some 

 of this distribution may have been an artifact of the sam- 

 pling design because no squid were sampled in the MAB 

 region in the 1-26 m depth zone, whereas this zone was 

 sampled in the SNE, and was the only zone for which data 

 were available for the GOM region. 



In the winter survey, the general pattern was the re- 

 verse of that seen in the autumn. In this survey squid 

 were generally smaller in the south (MAB) than in the 



