Investigations on blue whiting in the area west of the British Isles, spring 1994
Original version
This report is not to be cited without prior reference to the authorsAbstract
From March 25 to April 15 the Norwegian R.V. "Johan Hjort"
carried out acoustic surveying and biological and plankton
sampling on the blue whiting population congregated for
spawning along the shelf edge west of the British Isles.
Due to extremely bad weather conditions the survey was notably
amputated, causing the rate of area coverage and number of
trawl, hydrological and plankton stations to become rather
low.
The spawning stock size was estimated to 4.1 mill. tonnes,
which, however, must be considered as an underestimate. Like
last year, the 1989-yearclass was found to dominate the
stock.
The temperature in the upper 200m layer was generally lower
than observed in 1993.
Blue whiting eggs and larvae were taken at the shelf-edgs and
over Porcupine Bank. Eggs were taken in increasing abundance
from he surface to a maximum at 380-400m depth.