Biology and fisheries of eastern Mediterranean hake (M. merluccius)

Abstract

The European hake, Merluccius merluccius L. , 1758, is a gadoid species distributed throughout the Mediterranean Sea and in the Atlantic Ocean from Iceland to Morocco (Whitehead et al ., 1984), occurring at depths from shallow waters to 1000 m. It ranks among the commercially most important demersal species in the Mediterranean Sea. The Mediterranean hake catch in 1987 amounted to 37 604 t and constituted 3.4% of the total Mediterranean fish catch of 1 102 500 t.