ABSTRACT 



This report provides ichthyoplankton and associated 

 station and tow data from California Cooperative Oceanic 

 Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) cruises conducted off 

 California and Baja California in 1978. It is the twenty-second 

 report in a series that presents these data for all biological- 

 oceanographic CalCOFI surveys from 1951 to the present. A total 

 of 1241 stations was occupied during seven monthly multivessel 

 cruises over the survey area which extended from Pt. Reyes, 

 California to Pt. San Juanico, Mexico, and seaward to several 

 hundred miles. The data are listed in a series of 6 tables; the 

 background, methodology, and information necessary for 

 interpretation and quantitative analysis of the data are 

 presented in an accompanying text. All pertinent station and tow 

 data, including volumes of water strained and standard haul 

 factors, are listed in the first table. Another key table lists, 

 by station and month, standardized counts of each of the 174 

 larval fish categories identified from survey samples. This and 

 previous and subsequent reports make the CalCOFI ichthyoplankton 

 and station data available to all investigators and serve as 

 guides to the newly developed computer data base. 



INTRODUCTION 



This report, the twenty-second of a series, provides 

 ichthyoplankton and associated station and tow data from 

 California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) 

 joint biological-oceanographic survey cruises conducted in 1978. 

 This program was initiated in 1949, under the sponsorship of the 

 Marine Research Committee of the State of California, to study 

 the population fluctuations of the Pacific sardine {Sardinops 

 sagax) and the environmental factors that may play a role in such 

 fluctuations. CalCOFI, known as the California Cooperative 

 Sardine Research Program from 1949 to 1953, was made up of 

 representatives of the South Pacific Fisheries Investigations 

 (SPFI) of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [now the La Jolla 

 Laboratory, National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) ] , the 

 Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) , the California 

 Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) , the California Academy of 

 Sciences (CAS) and the Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford 

 University. The first three of these agencies supplied ships and 

 personnel to conduct the sea surveys. NMFS processed the 

 plankton samples and analyzed the ichthyoplankton from them. SIO 

 processed and analyzed the hydrographic samples and measurements 

 and also analyzed invertebrate groups from the plankton samples. 



The boundaries, station placement, and sampling frequency 

 for the CalCOFI survey area were based on the results of joint 

 biological and oceanographic cruises conducted by NMFS and SIO 

 during 1939-41. Those cruises were designed to collect sardine 

 eggs and larvae and associated hydrographic data over the entire 

 areal and seasonal spawning range of the species. On these 

 survey cruises, plankton tows were made to 70 m, a depth which 



