Ichthyoplankton composition from ECOPEL cruise 2, Southern Brazilian Shelf, in 1988

The ECOPEL cruise series were part of the "Estudo do Ecossistema Pelágico do Extremo Sul do Brasil" project conducted by the Department of Oceanography of the Federal University of Rio Grande. The four seasonal cruises covered a region between the 32ºS and 34º30'S in the South Brazil Shelf. Ten transects (11 on the 1st cruise) perpendicular to the coastline with stations spaced 20 nautical miles (~ 37 km) apart were performed by the research vessel Atlantico Sul, and resulted in approximately 57 oceanographic stations per cruise limited to the 500 m isobath (Vasconcellos & Castello, 1996; Marcon, 2003).Ichthyoplankton samples were obtained by oblique trawls with a 0.6 m mouth diameter 300 ?m mesh size bongo net coupled with a flowmeter. Speed tows were approximately 1.3 m s -1 (2.5 kt). The trawls were performed between the surface and 5 m above the bottom in shallow water, and from 200 m depth to the surface in the deep stations. The samples were fixed and preserved in formaldehyde solution, buffered with sodium tetraborate, diluted in sea water with a final approximate concentration of 4%. The volume filtered was calculated and used to standardize the abundance of fish eggs and larvae per 100 m3 of filtered water (Vasconcellos et al., 1998; Marcon, 2003).