FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 83, NO. 2 



hanced growth and reproduction of zoo- 

 plankton and reduced competition from 

 other larvae. However, the supply of food for 

 larvae was less than that thought neces- 

 sary for rapid growth and high survival, 

 and the spatial association between total 

 larvae and abundant, small food (di- 

 noflagellates and protozoans) was slightly 

 less strong after the storm; this category of 

 food was not significantly more abundant 

 after the storm. 



Lacking information on the planktonic stocks 

 and their distribution, we might have hy- 

 pothesized that the decrease in abundance of lar- 

 val fish following the storm (Fig. 2) was due to 

 starvation because the storm-induced turbulence 

 homogenized the vertical distributions of food. 

 The results shown in Figure 4 make this 

 hypothesis untenable. 



Even though we did not find concentrations of 

 food exceeding laboratory-determined thresholds 

 for growth, certainly the most important conclu- 

 sion with respect to the storm from the point of 

 view of a larval fish is that there was as much food 

 available after the storm and that copepod nauplii 

 (which laboratory studies have shown to be desir- 

 able prey) increased significantly. In view of this, 

 we predict that the larvae present after the storm 

 were growing faster (or starving more slowly), 

 were in better condition, and were more likely to 

 have food in their guts than those present before 

 the storm, even though the latter were the more 

 numerous. Also, since the available food increased 

 at several depths in the water column, we predict 

 that the occurrences of well-nourished anchovy 

 larvae (if any were present) should be shallower 

 after the storm and less strictly confined to one or 

 two depth strata. 



A tendency for larvae to be less closely as- 

 sociated after the storm with layers of abundant 

 dinoflagellates and ciliates might negate this pre- 

 diction; the nature of the vertical relations should 

 now be examined using the more reliable distribu- 

 tions of larvae determined by a towed opening- 

 closing net. Another condition which would result 

 in failure of our prediction is if the larvae actually 

 rely for nutrition on micropatches of food, such as 

 organic aggregates and an associated assemblage 

 of phytoplankton and microzooplankton (e.g., 

 Alldredge 1976; Silver et al. 1978). Devonald 

 (1983) has suggested this for larvae of jack mack- 

 erel, Trachurus symmetricus, farther offshore in 

 the Southern California Bight. If this is true, sam- 



pling on the scale of hundreds of liters, as we did, 

 would not detect the redistribution of food on the 

 scale most important for larval survival and 

 growth; storm-induced turbulence could have dis- 

 rupted such micropatches, making the supply of 

 food less rather than more favorable. A large 

 amount of true microscale sampling, such as that 

 done by Owen (1981), would then be required to 

 predict correctly the effect of the storm on the 

 larvae. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



We thank R. Lasker, G. Moser, and R. Owen of 

 the National Marine Fisheries Service for collab- 

 oration in this project. J. Star and P. Peterson 

 assisted with sampling, as did D. Carlson, owner 

 and operator of the Fisherette. D. Cayan and R. 

 Seymour supplied some of the wind and wave data. 

 This long after the fact, we thank Neptune for the 

 storm. E. Venrick made helpful comments on the 

 manuscript (especially in its statistical aspects), 

 and D. Osborn typed it several times. Financial 

 support was from the Department of Energy, DE- 

 AT03-82-ER60031, and ship funds from the 

 Marine Life Research Group. 



LITERATURE CITED 



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 BARNETT, A.M. 



1974. The feeding ecology of an omnivorous neritic 

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Brooks, e. r., and m. m. Mullin. 



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