236 
Fishery Bulletin 119(4) 
Table 1 
The number of stations, number of stations with catch, and number of sampled Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) and 
white hake (Urophycis tenuis) for which lengths were recorded in the Gulf of Maine as part of the NOAA Northeast 
Fisheries Science Center bottom longline survey (LLS) and bottom trawl survey (BTS) during 2014-2018, by season 
and year. Data were selected from strata with rough bottom for the LLS and from strata used in the stock assess- 
ments for these species for the BTS (for strata used in the assessments, see NEFSC, 2013a, 2013b). 
LLS 
No. of No. of 
stations 
with catch 
stations 
Species sampled 
Atlantic cod 
White hake 
and of 1726 individuals in the fall. Atlantic cod were pres- 
ent in sampling of the BTS at 48% and 30% of stations 
in the spring and fall, respectively (Table 1). There was 
a difference between seasons in sample size in the BTS 
for cod, with lengths of 1298 individuals measured in the 
spring and of 724 individuals measured in the fall. White 
hake were more prevalent than cod in catches of the BTS, 
with white hake caught at 70% of the stations sampled in 
the spring and at 83% of the stations sampled in the fall. 
Lengths were collected from 2744 and 3937 white hake 
sampled during the BTS in the spring and fall, respec- 
tively. The number of lengths recorded during the BTS 
were low for both species in 2018 compared with in 2014— 
2017, especially for cod (Table 1). 
Overall, the size distribution of cod captured in the LLS 
was similar to that in the BTS (Table 2, Fig. 3). Mean length 
of cod in the BTS was 50.7 cm TL (standard deviation [SD] 
15.2; range: 15-93 cm TL) in the spring and 53.4 cm TL 
(SD 23.0; range: 13-93 cm TL) in the fall; whereas, the 
mean length of cod in the LLS was 50.0 cm TL (SD 10.5; 
range: 24-91 cm TL) in the spring and 58.9 cm TL (SD 16.4; 
BTS 
No. of No. of 
fish with No. of No. of fish with 
lengths stations stations lengths 
recorded sampled with catch recorded 
285 
range: 26-103 cm TL) in the fall. Length distributions for 
cod from both surveys were very comparable, particularly 
for cod over 40 cm TL (Fig. 3). The distribution for cod 
caught in the BTS in spring was characterized as bimodal, 
split around the length of 25 cm TL, with fish below that 
size not fully represented. The distribution for cod caught 
in the BTS in fall was also bimodal, split around the length 
of 35 cm TL, with a large contribution from fish <35 cm TL. 
The size distribution for cod caught in the LLS in both sea- 
sons combined was unimodal with limited representation 
of fish <40 cm TL. 
Although there were annual variations among years for 
both surveys (Table 2, Suppl. Figs. 1 and 2 [online only]), 
distributions of cod length in the spring generally had 
high overlap from 40 to 70 cm TL, and the overlap of dis- 
tributions in the fall was similar but with slightly higher 
proportions of fish with lengths of 40-65 cm TL in the 
LLS. The proportion of cod >70 cm TL had high similarity 
between the surveys in the fall, with the exception of a few 
fish in the LLS that were >95 cm TL. The distributions 
of fish caught in the BTS and LLS largely overlapped in 
