Publication Abstract

Temperature- dependent fish egg development rates are required for various applications including the estimation of spawning stock biomass by the annual (or daily) egg production methods (AEPM or DEPM, respectively) for commercially important fish species, individual based models, and ecosystem modelling. All the available experimental data on Irish Sea haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus) egg development was collated from two experiments onboard research vessels (RV “Cirolana” in 1998 and RV “Cefas Endeavour” in 2010) and one laboratory based experiment at Port Erin Marine Laboratory in 2000. The experiments used flow-through incubators, artificially incubated eggs and covered a temperature range from 3 to 14^oC. Two different methods were then applied to estimate temperature-dependent development rates of Irish Sea haddock eggs:  ‘end of stage’ models and multinomial models, and the results compared. Mortality patterns were also investigated with the objective of understanding the effect of temperature on the mortality of haddock eggs throughout their development. Current applications use models developed for other haddock stocks, however the relationships between temperature and fish egg development rates can be stock dependent as demonstrated in other studies.