FISHERY BULLETIN VOL 77. NO 1 



statistical analysis are described under Body 

 Proportions. Statistical tests were performed on 

 the IBM :i70-148' computer at The George 

 Washington University, using computer pro- 

 grams written and maintained at the Systematics 

 Laboratory, NMFS, NOAA. and following .statis- 

 tical methods presented by Zar (1974). 



GEOGRAPHICAL VARIATION 



The distribution of the fourbeard rockling may 

 be summarized as the coastal waters of the North 

 Atlantic. In the western Atlantic the species oc- 

 curs in: West Greenland (new record); the north- 

 western Gulf of Saint Lawrence and around New- 

 foundland as well (Leim and Scott 1966 and this 

 paper) to Cape Fear (about lat. 34°N) ( Bigelow and 

 Schroeder 1953); the northeast coast of Florida 

 (Bullis and Thompson 1965); off the Florida Keys 

 (new record); and in the northern Gulf of Mexico 

 (new record). In the eastern Atlantic the species 

 occurs: around Iceland (Saemundsson 1949) and 

 the Faroes (Joensen and Taaning 1970); from 

 northern Norway at about lat. 71°N in the Barents 

 Sea and south along the coasts of Scandinavia 

 (Andriyashev 1954); in the western Baltic (rarely 

 to the Gulf of Finland, Svetovidov 1973); th rough - 



^Reference to trade names does not imply endorsement by the 

 National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA. 



out the Noi'th Sea and around the British Isles to 

 the northern Bay of Biscay (Wheeler 1969; Du 

 Buit 1968); and off Cape Blanc, Mauritania (new 

 record). It is not known from the Mediterranean. 

 Figure 1 shows the approximate localities from 

 which we have studied specimens. More detailed 

 locality data are presented in the Appendix. 



Sampling Areas 



We have compared fish from the following geo- 

 graphical areas. 



Gulf of Mexico. Only 3 localities are represented 

 in our collections. These specimens are among the 

 most darkly pigmented of any we have studied. 



Southern Atlantic. Specimens taken from the 

 South Carolina coast at about lat. 33°N to about 

 lat. 29^N on the east coast of Florida, which is as 

 far south as specimens have been caught in the 

 western Atlantic outside of the Gulf of Mexico. 

 There is no reason to doubt that this population is 

 continuous with those farther north, and the 

 northern boundary as here given is arbitrarily 

 limited by available study material. 



Intermediate. Fish caught in the vicinity of Cape 

 Hatteras from about lat. 35°N to the vicinity of 

 Norfolk Canyon at about lat. 37"N are included in 



Figure l. — Localities for our specimens of Efichelyopus cimbriu^. Some dots represent more than one collection. For detailed data on 



localities see Appendix. 



92 



