Abstract
Adult anglerfish conduct annual migrations between spawning areas and feeding areas; for Faroese waters this migration has so far not been described. Therefore, anglerfish migration and distribution in Faroese waters was investigated by mark-recapture studies, including data storage tags, as well as data from scientific trawl surveys, commercial trawlers and gillnetters. The fish distribution was compared to hydrographical conditions such as sea surface- and bottom temperature. A clear seasonal offshore-onshore migration was observed. Anglerfish occupied shallower waters (<200 m) during summer and deeper waters, especially on the western side of the Faroe shelf, during winter. This seasonal movement was most evident for sexually mature fish longer than 70 cm indicating spawning in deep waters during winter. Further, during winter anglerfish experienced cold water, which indicated that they were distributed close to the main interface of cold water masses surrounding the shelf. The fish were mostly located in warm water (6.5–11°C) and seldom occurred in colder waters than 4°C. Anglerfish appeared generally inactive, only around 5% of the total data storage tag recordings showed more than 5 m vertical movement between two subsequent hourly recordings. This vertical activity varied seasonally by being higher during winter than summer and diurnally by being higher during night time than day time, indicating that sunrise and day length played an important role in vertical movements.
Highlights
Anglerfish have an affinity for the relatively warm water masses of the midlatitudes
There appears to be a link between the increase and decrease in anglerfish landings in Faroese waters and a weakening and subsequently intensification of the subpolar gyre index (SPG, Figure 2)
We have shown that the vertical activity of anglerfish is closely linked to the sun angle, and light intensity (Figure 10B)
Summary
Anglerfish (genus Lophius) have an affinity for the relatively warm water masses of the midlatitudes. The anglerfish species Lophius piscatorius in the northeast Atlantic is a boreal fish, which generally is distributed between the Straits of Gibraltar and the western Mediterranean Sea (Caruso, 1983) in the south, Icelandic waters in the west (Solmundsson et al, 2010) and the Barents Sea in the north (Thangstad et al, 2006). They occupy mainly muddy to gravel bottom biotopes, from the sublittoral zone to depths of around 1,000 m (Caruso, 1983; Mouritsen, 2007). Seasonal migration has been directly observed or hypothesized to exist among various
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