Morphometric And Meristic Variation In European Hake, Merluccius Merluccius, From The Northeast Atlantic And Mediterranean Sea

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Morphometric and meristic variation was used to investigate the European hake population structure. Samples were collected from the following selected areas: Sothwest of Ireland (Great Sole Bank), Bay of Biscay, Galician waters (Northwest of Spain), Atlantic coast of Morocco, and waters of the Balearic Islands. A total of 15 different measurements were taken from each of 289 fish collected. Three meristic characters were also counted in the specimens from Bay of Biscay, Galicia and Morocco. The morphometric measurements were standardized to a grand mean standard length using an allometric formula. Meristic and morphometric characters were analysed by univariate and multivariate statistics. Morphometric discriminant functions were able to correctly classify the 69% of the samples. The areas: Bay of Biscay, Balearic Islands and Great Sole had the higher levels of discrimination with a values greater than 73%. These results cast doubt on the current stock units defined in the Northeast Atlantic, suggesting a more complex stock structure in the so called “Northern stock”. ANOVA results on meristic characters showed significative differences, P< 0.05, between the samples from Morocco and Galicia. The results are discussed in relation with the diversity of the environmental conditions and compared with those provided with other techniques, mainly genetics, applied in European hake for stock identification purposes and obtained from the bibliography.