PARRISH ET AL.: REGIONAL VARIATIONS IN NORTHERN ANCHOVY 



Table 6. — Age composition (%) of northern anchovies taken in shallow and deep- 

 water areas (depth in fathonns). 



slowly with increasing depth there than in southern 

 California (Tkble 6B). In both southern California 

 and northern Baja California, there is a direct rela- 

 tionship between average age and depth of water in 

 which fish were caught. In the period August- 

 December when smaller (< 60 mm) anchovies can 

 be caught by midwater trawls, there is a greater 

 dominance of young-of-the-year fish in the shallower 

 water (Tkble 6C). In the northern Baja California 

 area, 63% of the 5-25 stratum and 53% of the 25-50 

 stratum were young-of-the-year fish. In southern 

 California the corresponding percentages were 66 

 and 38. 



Sea Survey - Fishery Comparisons 



The purse seine fleets which harvest anchovies 

 operate primarily out of San Pedro, California, and 

 Ensenada, Mexico. The age composition of anchovies 

 in the San Pedro fishery (Mallicoate and Parrish 



1981) contains a smaller proportion of age and age 

 1 fish than does the sea survey data for the San 

 Pedro Channel region. We only had 2 years of age 

 composition data for the Ensenada fishery available 

 to us (Sunada and Silva 1980), but this limited in- 

 formation shows the same dominance of younger an- 

 chovies as in the sea survey data for this region. The 

 San Pedro fishery had several regulations which 

 reduced the numbers of young fish in the catch. 

 These included a 5-in minimum size limit and a series 

 of area closures which prevent the fleet from fishing 

 in nearshore areas. The Ensenada fishery did not 

 have regulations which influenced the age composi- 

 tion of the catch. 



Tb evaluate the effects of the area closures and size 

 limit on the San Pedro fishery, we broke the sea 

 survey data into depth classifications, < 50 fathoms 

 and > 50 fathoms. The > 50 fathom classification 

 was intended to approximate the area of the fishery 

 (i.e, the coastal strip is excluded). In this area the 



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