Larval Fish East of the Shetland Islands, May 1978 and May 1979

A list of larval fish species sampled during an ecological study of the gadoid larvae in the east of the Shetland Islands area in 1978 (6–21 May) and 1979 (9–30 May) is given in Table 1· 14157 fish larvae were caught in 1978 (in 154 oblique hauls with the High Speed Loch Ewe Net, an unencased sampler with a net of 0·250 mm mesh) and 13 769 larvae in 1979 (in 93 hauls), from which 13632 and 12440 larvae were identified and measured in these 2 years respectively. Most unidentified specimens were damaged. Larval fish taxonomy is given according to Russell (1976). The description of the sampling instrument and the working procedure at sea can be found elsewhere (Economou, 1983).The Gadidae family dominated all others accounting for more than 85% of the total, the three most abundant species being Norway pout(Trisopterus esmarkii (Nilsson)), haddock(Melanogrammus aeglefinus (L.)) and whiting (Merlangius merlangus (L.)).Whiting appeared under three pigmentation patterns, the normal one, another with very weak pigment and a third having the dorsal side of the body very strongly pigmented, sometimes with a gap free of pigment along the dorsal contour. The characters of the last two forms correspond somewhat with the descriptions of the whiting larvae from the southern North Sea and the Loch Etive (Russell, 1976). Norway pout displayed the typical form of melanophores but few specimens presented a pattern of fine but intense spots. There was some evidence that a few of the larvae identified as Norway pout at the end of May 1979 were actually Trisopterus minutus larvae.