European Ocean Biodiversity Information System

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MEGS: Mackerel and horse mackerel eggs
Citation
ICES. Mackerel and horse mackerel eggs. Available online at http://eggsandlarvae.ices.dk. Consulted on yyyy-mm-dd. https://marineinfo.org/id/dataset/2470
Contact: Alcorn, Trevor ; Holdsworth, Neil

Access data
Archived data
Availability: Creative Commons License This dataset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Notes: ICES Data Policy: https://www.ices.dk/data/guidelines-and-policy/Pages/ICES-data-policy.aspx

Description
The survey existed since 1968. It is carried out every 3 years in the north eastern Atlantic. The year after the Atlantic survey, a mackerel egg survey is conducted in the North Sea. The survey creates a basis for the stock assessment of Atlantic and North Sea mackerel and management plan for Atlantic horse mackerel. The historical MEGS data is expected to be uploaded in 2015-2016. The group responsible for the survey is WGMEGS. more

The working group on mackerel and horse mackerel egg surveys (WGMEGS) coordinates the Mackerel and Horse Mackerel Egg Survey in the Northeast Atlantic and the Mackerel Egg Survey in the North Sea, both which are carried out triennially. Eggdata collected from both surveys provide an indices for the strength of the SSB of both the western and North Sea stocks of Atlantic mackerel (Scomber scombrus) and a relative abundance index of horse mackerel (Trachurus trachurus) spawning stocks in the Northeast Atlantic. The surveys are divided into 3 geogr aphical component areas, the western, southern and the North Sea. In the western area the mackerel egg survey has been running continuously on a triennial basis since 1977 and since 1992 has also sampled the southern spawning component. It typically takes place between February and July and aims to cover the entire spawning area from Cadiz in the south up as far as NW Scotland in the North and since 2010 up to the waters around the Faroe Islands and southeast of Iceland. The egg survey in the North Sea has been running since 1968.

A comprehensive description of the survey protocols, analysis techniques together with the methods used for calculating the egg abundance estimates can be found in the WGMEGS survey manual which is contained within Annex 5 of the 2 012 WGMEGS


Scope
Themes:
Biology > Fish
Keywords:
Marine/Coastal, Fish eggs, Long-term monitoring, Monitoring, ANE, British Isles, Scotland, ANE, Portugal, ANE, Spain, ANE: Ireland, Irish Exclusive Economic Zone, EurOBIS calculated BBOX, Scomber scombrus Linnaeus, 1758, Trachurus trachurus (Linnaeus, 1758)

Geographical coverage
ANE, British Isles, Scotland [Marine Regions]
ANE, Portugal [Marine Regions]
ANE, Spain [Marine Regions]
ANE: Ireland, Irish Exclusive Economic Zone
EurOBIS calculated BBOX Stations
Bounding Box
Coordinates: MinLong: -25,77; MinLat: 35,9 - MaxLong: 13,1713; MaxLat: 68,2547 [WGS84]

Temporal coverage
From 1992 on [In Progress]
Three-yearly

Taxonomic coverage
Scomber scombrus Linnaeus, 1758 [WoRMS]
Trachurus trachurus (Linnaeus, 1758) [WoRMS]

Parameters
Abundance of eggs
Salinity
Water temperature

Contributors
Marine Institute Ireland (MI), moredata owner
Alcorn, Trevor
International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), moredata creator
Holdsworth, Neil

Related datasets
Parent dataset:
Eggs and larvae
Published in:
EurOBIS: European Ocean Biodiversity Information System, more

Publication
Describing this dataset
The Working Group on Mackerel and Horse Mackerel Egg Surveys (2014). Manual for the mackerel and horse mackerel egg surveys (MEGS): sampling at sea. Series of ICES Survey Protocols, SISP 6 - MEGS V1.3. ICES: Copenhagen. 62 pp.
ICES (2013). ICES Data Centre, Eggs and Larvae Data Fact Sheet, 2013. ICES: Copenhagen. 22 pp.


Dataset status: In Progress
Data type: Data
Data origin: Monitoring: field survey
Metadatarecord created: 2010-07-15
Information last updated: 2022-06-16
All data in the Integrated Marine Information System (IMIS) is subject to the VLIZ privacy policy