Tautoga onltls , tautog 



Tautog were found In all programs except seines, but the taxon 

 ranked among the top ten species only in the plankton programs (Table 

 1). Tautog, second ranked among the eggs, made up 32% of all eggs 

 identified during 1979-1983 at EN and 24% at NB. Larvae ranked fifth 

 (4% of total abundance) at NB and sixth (2%) at EN. Post-larval tautog 

 were found in low numbers in trawl and impingement collections. They 

 were most abundant at the nearshore trawl stations (JC, IN and NR) 

 (Table 3) May through October (Table 4) . The length frequency 

 distribution of trawl-caught tautog was bimodal with peaks at 50 and 170 

 mm, while the impingement length frequency was unimodal peaking between 

 110 and 170 mm (Fig. 23). 



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Figure 23. Length frequency of T^. onitis in trawl (left) and impingement 

 (right) collections from October 1976 through September 1983. 



The fluctuations in the density of tautog eggs and larvae in the 

 plankton programs were modeled using harmonic regression techniques. In 

 all other sampling programs the catch of tautog was too low to obtain a 

 representative model. All models contained terms describing a 12- and 

 6-mo cycle (Table 12) . The models of the log-transformed plankton 



39 



