Atlas and zoogeography of common fishes in the Bering Sea and northeastern Pacific

• Main Authors: Allen, M. James, Smith, Gary B.
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: NOAA/National Marine Fisheries Service 1988
• Subjects: Ecology; Management; Fisheries; Biology; Bering Sea; Chukchi Sea; Gulf of Alaska; Pacific; Chukchi; Alaska
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1834/20543

The geographic and depth frequency distribution of 124 common demersal fish species in the northeastern Pacific were plotted from data on me at the Northwest and Alaska Fisheries Center (NWAFC), National Marine Fisheries Service. The data included catch records of fishes and invertebrates from 24,881 samples taken from the Chukchi Sea, throughout the Bering Sea, Aleutian Basin, AleutianArchipelago, and the Gulf of Alaska, and from southeastern Alaska south to southern California. Samples were collected by a number of agencies and institutions over a 30-year period (1953-83), but were primarily from NWAFC demersaltrawls. The distributions of all species with 100 or more occurrences in the data set were plotted by computer.Distributions plotted from these data were then compared with geographic and depth-range limits given in the literature. These data provide new range extensions(geographic, depth, or both) for 114 species. Questionable extensions are noted, the depth ranges determined for 95% of occurrences, and depths of most frequent occurrence are recorded. Ranges of the species were classified zoogeographically, according to life zone, and with regard to the depth zone of greatest occurrence. Because most species examined have broad geographic ranges, they do not provide the best information for testing the validity of proposed zoogeographic province boundaries. Because of the location of greatest sampling effort and methods used in sampling,most fIShes examined were eastern boreal Pacific, sublittoral-bathyal (outer shelf) species. (PDF file contains 158 pages.)