Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2009
Nephrops norvegicus (Linnaeus, 1758) is a valuable commercial shellfish species. UK landings in 1986 totalled 25,515 tonnes with a market value of over £39 million. It is difficult to estimate stock abundance using trawl surveys because of seasonal changes in the availability of females which tend to remain in their burrows whilst berried (ovigerous) (Chapman, 1980). An alternative method is to assess the number of mature adults in the stock using fecundity data and abundance estimates of larvae derived from plankton surveys (Thompson et al., 1986; Nichols et al., 1987). Estimates of the age of larvae are necessary to enable daily and seasonal production rates to be calculated from abundance data. Water temperature causes considerable variations in the development rate of planktonic Crustacea (Winberg, 1971; Thompson, 1982), and reliable estimates of larvae production therefore require knowledge of the relationship between stage duration and water temperature. This paper describes the results of laboratory experiments carried out from 1984 to 1986 to study this relationship in the three free-swimming stages referred to as zoea I-III by Farmer (1974). Stage IV is generally accepted as the first juvenile stage (Anger & Püschel, 1986). The morphology and general biology of Nephrops larvae are described by Farmer (1975) and Nichols et al. (1987); these authors comment on the scarcity of data concerning the effect of temperature on stage duration.