The Biology of Fish of the Family Moridae in the Deep-Water of the Rockall Trough

Abstract

The morid fishes are important members of the deep-water associations of fish on the continental slope of the Rockall Trough. Three species, Lepidion eques, Halargyreus johnsonii and Mora moro, are distributed between about 500 and 1250 m while Antimora rostrata has its centre of abundance between about 1750 and 2200 m. Aspects of their biology including changes in abundance and length composition with depth, reproduction and fecundity and age composition are described.INTRODUCTIONIn a trawling survey of the bottom-living fish of the Rockall Trough at depths from about 400 to 2900 m, 4 species of the family Moridae were sampled. Three species, Lepidion eques, Halargyreus johnsonii and Mora moro were distributed on the upper and mid slopes while a fourth species Antimora rostrata occurred on the lower slope and continental rise. Several different trawls were used to sample the fish populations of the slope and Gordon & Duncan (in the Press) have discussed the relative selectivity of each of these nets for sampling different species of fish. In many of the bathymetric zones fished morids were important both in terms of biomass and abundance. Some preliminary observations on aspects of the biology of Lepidion eques have been published (Gordon, 1979 a, b) and Mauchline & Gordon (1980, 1984) have described the diets of the morid fish from the Rockall Trough in some detail. In this paper other aspects of their biology will be described.