No abstract

Bio-indicators were measured on juvenile fish to assess the quality of eight coastal and estuarine nursery grounds in the Eastern English Channel and in the Bay of Biscay during 3 years. Growth (size and otolith daily increment width), body condition (morphometric index) and abundance of juvenile common soles were analysed together with xenobiotic concentrations (heavy metals and organic contaminants). Condition indices displayed important variations and did not allow relevant estimation of environmental quality. On the contrary, growth and density indicators showed good steadiness above years but varied among sites. In spite of difficulties of interpreting these indicators on such a meso-scale approach, analyses highlighted the estuaries of Seine and Gironde. In these nursery areas, the levels of contamination were especially high, and the combination of fish growth performances and density was significantly lower than in other sites. The combination of these variables appears to provide reliable indicators of habitat quality and anthropogenic pressure on nursery grounds, especially highlighting contaminated areas. Such indicators may thus contribute to improve assessment of environmental quality of essential fish habitats with the aim of a sustainable management of fisheries resources. A study at a different scale, from this meso-scale nursery approach with more precise analyses, on local habitats, will nevertheless be necessary to optimize the relevance of these indicators for the assessment of essential fish habitat quality.

The European eel larval life has two stages: the oceanic leptocephalus, in which growth is dependent on food supply, and the metamorphosis glass eel stage, in which feeding and growth are stopped until immigration in estuarine waters. Data from fisheries and experimental surveys in European estuaries at different periods between the 1930s and the 1990s showed a simultaneous decrease of mean length and abundance level. A monthly survey at the Vilaine estuary (Bay of Biscay) during 2 years provided a periodical model of seasonal variation in length and weight of newly recruited glass eels. Otolith microstructure was used to backcalculate larval stage durations and the timing of transatlantic migration. Glass eels entering the estuary in autumn are longer and more numerous than those arriving in summer. They migrated across the ocean during spring and summer, seasons when plankton production is likely to reach maximum levels. The proposed hypothesis regarding the determinism of recruitment in the eel, on the seasonal and on the yearly range, is that leptocephalus growth and glass eel survival are partly dependent on the plankton production at the oceanic scale. Eel recruitment dynamics could provide an integrated figure of large-scale environment fluctuations. 0 1997 The Fisheries Society of the British Isles

Eastward currents in the thermocline and subthermocline layers of the tropical Atlantic Ocean are described using observations obtained during two boreal summer cruises covering the whole equatorial basin. The analysis focuses on the eastward evolution of zonal currents in the thermocline and sub‐thermocline. The Equatorial Undercurrent is not found close to the African coast in boreal summer 2000, maybe because of interannual variability. As observed in the Pacific, the South and North Equatorial Undercurrents are shown to shift poleward from west to east, and the two cruises indicate that the North Equatorial Undercurrent does not enter the Gulf of Guinea. The South and North Intermediate Countercurrents are variable with longitude and, contrarily to the observations in the eastern equatorial Pacific, are not found in the east of the Guinea basin.