A MORPHOMETRIC STUDY 

 OF SILVER HAKE 



by 



John T. Conover' and Raymond L. Fritz, 



Fishery Research Biologists 



and 



Manuel Vieira,'. statistical Clerk 



U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service 



Woods Hole, Massachusetts 



ABSTRACT 



Evidence is presented that the silver hake population 

 along the Atlantic coast is comprised of two separate groups. One 

 group inhabits the waters off the New England coast and the other is 

 found off the southern New England, New York, and New Jersey 

 coasts. Two characters, head length and pelvic fin length, gave con- 

 sistent differences for separating these groups during two seasons of 

 the year. The data were analyzed by appropriate F-tests in an analy- 

 sis of covariance and by a T -test for the distance between regression 

 lines. 



INTRODUCTION 



A program of researchon the biology 

 of the silver hake (Merluccius bilinear is, 

 Mitchill) was initiated in 1955 at the 

 Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of 

 Commercial Fisheries, Biological 

 Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachu- 

 setts. This species is fished conrinner- 

 cially in the coastal waters from Maine 

 to New Jersey and is processed largely 

 for human consumption with lesser 

 amounts being used for animal food 

 and industrial purposes. One of the 

 research aims was to determine if the 

 silver hake caught by the commercial 

 fishing fleet consist of one or more 



than one population. In the present 

 study, morphometrlc data from the 

 Gulf of Maine, Rhode Island, New York, 

 and New Jersey are compared. 



Acknowledgments 



The authors wish to acknowledge the 

 statistical help given by William H. 

 Callahan of the Woods Hole Biological 

 Laboratory. 



MATERIALS AND METHODS 



Silver hake used in this study were 

 collected from pound nets, weirs, and 

 otter trawlers from Maine to New 



'Present address: Department of Botany, University of EUnde Island, Kingston, Rhode Island. 



'Presently employed as a Fishery Marketing Specialist, Division of Resource Development, Branch of Statistics. 

 Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, Washington, D. C. 



