FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 76. NO. 3 



reasons, catch per tow was used as a supplemen- 

 tary estimate of abundance in addition to catch per 

 square meter derived from odometer readings. 



All fishes were preserved with 107c buffered 

 Formalin'* at sea, and identified, measured (stan- 

 dard length, SL) and weighed (wet preserved 

 weight) ashore. 



RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 



Fish Assemblages 



The rank order of abundance of the 10 most 

 common species are shown in Table 2. Pacific 

 sanddab, Citharichthys sordidus, was the numeri- 

 cal dominant at the four shallowest (74-102 m) 

 stations where it composed 25-86% of the total 



number of fishes captured. At the three deepest 

 ( 148-195 m) stations, slender sole, L^'opse^ta exilis, 

 ranked first in abundance where it composed 

 38-429^ of the number of fishes collected. Rex sole, 

 Glyptocephalus zachirus, ranked second in abun- 

 dance at all stations (except at Station 6 where it 

 was third). The high rank of rex sole at all stations 

 corroborates Hosie's ^ observation that rex sole is 

 probably the most widely distributed sole on the 

 continental shelf and upper slope off Oregon, oc- 

 cupying a large bathymetric range with diverse 

 sediments. Dover sole, Microstomus pacificus, 

 ranked fourth at the four inshore stations and fifth 

 or sixth at the deeper stations. 



Demory's (1971) study off northern Oregon and 

 southern Washington showed that these flatfishes 

 were most abundant at the following depths: 



■'Reference to trade names does not imply endorsement by the 

 National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA. 



^Hosie.M.J. 1976. 

 Fish Wildl.,5 p. 



The rex sole. Inf. Rep. 76-2, Oreg. Dep. 



Table 2. — Ranks of the 10 most numerically abundant fishes at each of the seven stations, and the presence 

 ( + ) of these species at other stationsif they did not rank among the top 10. Absence of either a number or ( +) 

 indicates that a species was not captured at that station. 



'Based on odometer readings and based on estimates of distance trawled from times and ship's speed (TS). 



632 



