Contente and Rossi-Wongtschowski: Fish assemblages in the southeastern Brazilian Bight 
221 
Figure 1 
Maps of salinity and temperature (T) values collected at the mean depth of the fish aggregations at 
the water column and the locations of each midwater tow of each of 5 cruises of the Program ECOSAR 
(translates from Portuguese as “Prospecting to investigate sardine biomass by acoustic methods”) in the 
southeastern Brazilian Bight off southeastern Brazil: (A) and (F) ECOSAR III (18 November-2 December 
1995), (B) and (G) ECOSAR IV (20 January-2 February 2008), (C) and (H) ECOSAR V (8-24 November 
2008), (D) and (I) ECOSAR VI (22 September-8 October 2009), and (E) and ( J) ECOSAR VII (3-22 March 
2010). Tows are codified according to the water masses in which it was accomplished: Coastal Water (C), 
South Atlantic Central Water (S), and Mixed Water (M), an area of mixing of water masses. For the range 
and mean of depths for these cruises, see Table 3. Because these maps show mean depths, depths of some 
tows may have fluctuated around the mean; therefore, there should be cases where the code of the water 
mass of tow and the temperature and salinity gradient do not correspond. Zoomed-in images are provided 
to show points of overlapping tows. 
ary upwelling ecosystems (Lopes et al., 2006b). These 
hotspots are driven by substantial nutrients from 
oceanographic features, such as the Subtropical Shelf 
Front, the Rio de La Plata plume, the Patagonian tidal 
front, and coastal upwellings (Bisbal, 1995; Ciotti et 
al., 2014). 
The coastline of southeastern Brazil (the northern 
sector of SSAS) from Cabo Frio (22°52'S) to Cabo de 
Santa Marta Grande (28°40'S) forms the southeastern 
Brazilian Bight (SBB) (Fig. 1). Three water masses 
occur frequently in the SBB: the high-salinity and 
nutrient-rich South Atlantic Central Water (SACW) 
(temperature [T1 <18.5°C, salinity [S] =35.3— 36.0 ); the 
warm nutrient-poor Tropical Water (T>18.5°C, S>36.0); 
and the low-salinity mesotrophic Coastal Water (CW; 
T>18.5°C, S=34. 0—35.3); the latitudinal and bathymet- 
