THE BARENTS SEA 



121 



near high tide in the comparatively small section of the littoral investigated 

 (25,000 km 2 ). 



The most commonly consumed marine organisms (Fig. 46) on the littoral 

 were in order of declining significance: Gammaridae, Macoma baltica, 

 Littorina rudis, Mytilus edulis, Priapulus caudatus. Cod, coalfish, viviparous 

 blenny and goby feed there almost exclusively on gammarus with a small 



MACOMA BALTICA DISTRIBUTION AT 

 LOW TIDE, ON WESTERN MURMAN PENINSULA 



ARENICOLA MARINA DISTRIBUTION AT 

 LOW TIDE, ON WESTERN MURMAN PENINSULA 



Fig. 45. Quantitative distribution of main components of 



fauna of littoral of one of the gubas of western Murman 



(g/m 2 ) (Zenkevitch, Zatzepin and Filatova, 1948). 



admixture of other animals ; haddock and dab retain here their true bentho- 

 phagous nature. Haddock eats a little of everything, even a fairly large amount 

 of seaweed. On the whole the flounder feeds on bivalves (see mussel and 

 Macoma) and on Gastropoda (Littorina) molluscs but seizes everything else 

 too, in passing. Its indices of repletion are fairly high (100 to 340). 



A quantitative comparison of the mass of littoral organisms and the in- 

 testine contents (Fig. 46b) of the fish visiting the littoral shows that at every 

 flood-tide, i.e. twice a day, the fish consume about 003 per cent of the whole 

 fauna. 



From corresponding investigations at low tide the amount of animal forms 

 eaten in a year is about 1-5 to 2-0 tons, i.e. about 17 per cent of the whole 

 population ; moreover, in the main, only certain groups are being eaten, so that 



