Intra- and Interseasonal Changes in the Relative Condition and Proximate Body Composition of Broad Whitefish from the Prudhoe Bay Region of Alaska

Abstract

Abstract A relative weight approach was used to test the hypothesis that the condition of broad whitefish Coregonus nasus in the Prudhoe Bay region of Alaska increases during the summer feeding season in conjunction with their increasing lipid and protein contents and decreases during winter as fish consume these energy reserves. The conditions of individual fish collected across 12 summer dissection periods from 1988 to 1993 were indexed in terms of their residual values relative to a single whole-population, least-squares regression of log e (weight) against log e (length). Proximate body analyses of lipid and protein contents collected from individual fish across six dissection periods from 1991 to 1993 were also examined. Data pooled for individual year-classes were used to test for increasing mean residual value, mean lipid content, and mean protein content during summer and for decreasing values of each during winter. Of the 68 cases examined (14 year-classes over 6 years), mean residual value chang...