Pelagic Eggs and Young Stages of Fishes Taken on the South Coast of Ireland in 1967

Abstract

Emes W. L. Halt was one of the pioneers of research on the spawning and early development of marine fishes, and collections of pelagic eggs and young stages of fishes made by him on the west coast of Ireland were the basis of some major contributions to the then young science of fisheries biology (HoIt 1891, 1893, 1899). Much more recently Fives (1967a) has worked on pelagic young stages of fishes taken in the plankton on the coasts of Galway and Clare. Collections of eggs and young stages of clupeoids have been made on, the south coast of Ireland in winter during the years 1960-1962 (Bud and Bracken, 1965; Bracken and Kennedy, 1967). Hitherto, however, no collections of eggs or young stages of other fishes appear to have been made on the south coast. As part of a programme of research by the Inland Fisheries Trust into the biology of the bass, Dicerntrarchus labrax (L.) in Irish waters, tow-netting for bass eggs was carried out at four centres on the southeast and south coasts of Ireland during the period April to June 1967. Pelagic eggs of a variety of species of fish, including bass, were obtained, as well as larvae, post-larvae and fry. The tow-netting was done close to shore and in estuaries-areas not as a rule sampled as extensively as the offshore waters where the major commercial fishes The results of the tow-nettings help, therefore, to fill in some of the gaps in existing data on the reproduction of fishes on the Irish coast.