Table 1. — Station locations of 35 tons from the nnrlheastern Chukchi and west- 

 ern Beaufort Seas during August-September 1976 and 1977. 



northeastern Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. For three of those species 

 {Arclogadus glacialis (NMC82-0027), Lycodes raridens (NMC78- 

 0296). and Eumesogramtnus praecisus (NMC82-0026)), the first 

 Beaufort Sea records are from our trawls. Our records of Lycodes 

 lossi (NMC78-0289) fill a major gap in the known distribution of 

 the species which had been previously reported only from the Kara 

 Sea. Spitsbergen, and Herschel Island, Canada. 



Many of the species listed by other authors were not encountered 

 in our tows since pelagic species such as salmonids and osmerids 

 were not adequately sampled by our otter trawl and some species 

 such as Myoxocephahis quadricornis and Liopsetta glacialis are 

 restricted in distribution to coastal, brackish waters (Walters 1955; 

 Alverson and Wilimovsky 1966). 



All of the primarily marine species reported from western arctic 

 Canada by McAllister (1962) have been recorded from arctic 

 waters of the northeastern Chukchi or western Beaufort Seas (Table 

 3). McAllister suggested that this low arctic fauna, which he 

 termed the Innuit fauna, extends continuously from the Boothia 

 Peninsula region of the central Canadian Arctic westward through 

 the Beaufort. Chukchi. East Siberian, Laptev, Kara, and Barents 

 Seas. Faunal connections with the eastern Canadian Arctic and 

 North Atlantic are restricted, probably because of differences in 

 water temperature, salinity, and ice cover 



Alverson and Wilimovsky (1966) and Quast (1972) reported the 

 results of trawl surveys in the Chukchi Sea south and west of Icy 

 Cape in which they found approximately 43 species of marine 

 fishes. Fourteen of those, including 3 species of Pleuronectidae and 

 6 species of Cottidae, have not been reported from the northeastern 

 Chukchi and Beaufort Seas (Table 3). Those species are all primar- 

 ily North Pacific/Bering Sea forms which apparently reach the 

 northern limit of their distribution in the central Chukchi Sea near 

 Icy Cape. As mentioned previously, an additional five species reach 

 only to the vicinity of Point Barrow. 



Table 2.— Fishes caught in waters 40 m and deeper in the northeastern Chukchi and western Beaufort Seas during 

 August-September 1976 and 1977, rani^ed in order of decreasing numerical abundance in tows. 



