Dataset: salmon meristics

At each station, a Nordic 264 rope trawl built by Nor'Eastern Trawl Systems, Inc. was towed in surface waters by a chartered fishing vessel (F/V Sea Eagle in 2000 and F/V Frosti in 2002). It was towed with about 300 m of warp for 30 min at 1.5 m/sec with a pair of 3.0-m foam-filled trawl doors and 90.7-kg weight chains to spread the mouth open. Except for two mid-water trawling events, six A-4 Polyform floats were clipped to wingtips and the headrope to fish the trawl at the surface. The trawl has a maximum mouth opening of approximately 30-m wide x 18-m high. Mesh sizes ranged from 162.6 cm in the throat of the trawl near the jib lines to 8.9 cm in the codend. To maintain catches of small fish and squid, a 6.1-m long, 0.8-cm knotless liner was sewn into the codend. All but several tows were 30 min in duration. The majority of trawls were done during daytime, although a few were done at dawn and dusk and two diel series were completed in 2002.

All juvenile salmon caught were measured for fork lengths, then immediately frozen for laboratory analysis. In the laboratory, juvenile salmonids were weighed prior to dissections for subsamples of growth, condition, pathology, genetic analysis, and food habits. As large subadult/adult salmonids were released shortly after being captured, their weights were estimated from length-weight regressions.