Jungfischsituation in der Nordsee wenig ermutigend

In order to investigate the abundanceand strength of most recent year classes of cod,haddock, whiting, Norway pout, herring, sprat, and mackerel seven researchvessels of ICES member states carried out a bottom trawl survey in the North Sea in January/February 1996. Germany took part in these investigations by R.V. "Walther Herwig III" from January 19 to February 9 covering 62 out of 332 international stations. No substantial positive or negative results concerning the incoming year classes were obtained. As expected, the hydrographc situation of the area under investigation was strongly influenced by the actual weather: On the one hand, the continuous cooling of the surface layer by cold air caused vertical mixing down into the bottom layer in larger areas, and led to decreasing water temperatures which were below the long term values in nearly all the North Sea at the end of the investigation period. On the other hand, the continuous southern to eastern winds over the North Sea led to horizontal water mass transports renewing vertical salinity differences and inducing regionally positive as weH as negative salinity anomalies of up to 0.6· 10-3. ,