92°00 



31°003 



30° 



29° 



S8°00' 



87°00' 



30° 



?9° 



28' 00' 



92°00' 



87°00' 



I- K.I KE 2.— Area of the Gulf of Mexico sampled for southern kingfish during the fall offshore cruise (25 October 1979 through 14 

 November 1979' and during the spring offshore cruise (10-18 April 1980). Grids represent station sites established by the National 

 Marine Fisheries Service. 



temperatures of the waters in these regions are 

 influenced greatly by input from rivers and fresh- 

 water runoff. The estuaries drain into the Missis- 

 sippi Sound which is bordered on the south by 

 barrier islands. A complete description of the Mis- 

 sissippi Sound is given by Eleuterius (1978). 



Areas sampled varied geomorphologically with 

 location. Bottom types ranged from mud and silt in 

 the rivers and upper estuaries to sandy tidal zones 

 on the north side of the barrier islands. Overall 

 depths varied from 0.3 m at seine stations to 91.4 m 

 at offshore trawl stations. Sample areas in the 

 estuaries ranged from 0.3 m to 12.2 m with rela- 

 tively small tidal variations (0.1-0.6 m). 



with the Fisheries Monitoring and Assessment 

 Program at the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, 

 Ocean Springs, Miss. (Christmas 1978). 



The type of gear used was dictated by the bottom 

 topography and geographic location. At five sta- 

 tions along the barrier islands and in the es- 

 tuaries, a 15.2 m bag seine with 6.4 mm bar mesh 

 was used to collect juveniles. Larval and postlar- 

 val fish were collected by towing a Renfro beam 

 plankton net (BPL) with 50 holes/cm 2 and a 1.8 m 

 diameter mouth, in a 45.7 m semicircle at five 

 stations. During the 10-min tows, young-of-the- 

 year and adult southern kingfish were sampled 

 with a 4.9 m standard otter trawl with 19.9 mm 



Materials and Methods 



Monthly collections of southern kingfish were 

 made from October 1979 through September 1980 

 (Fig. 1, Table 1), with the exception of stations 93 

 through 98 which were sampled monthly from 

 February 1980 through September 1980. Twenty- 

 eight of the stations were sampled in conjunction 



TABLE 1. — Bottom salinities at monthly stations where south- 

 ern kingfish were collected. 



428 



