THE RECORDS OF TROPICAL FISHES AND THE WARMING OF THE EUROPEAN ATLANTIC WATERS

A recapitulation of the records of tropical fishes from European Atlan tic waters shows that 67.6 % were fishes caught from the upper slope, between approximately 200 and 600 m; 19.8 % were fishes caught from th e continental shelf; and 13.5 % were specimens caught from the middle slope, between 700 and 1 300 m. Since 1963, the upper slope species ha ve made regular northward range extensions off of south Portugal to no rth-western Ireland (about 55 degrees 30' N), more and less rapidly, a bout 30 years for Cyttopsis roseus and only 6 years for Sphoeroides pa chygaster. The continental shelf species, observed from 1969 but mostl y from 1981, have a northward range to south-eastern Ireland (about 52 degrees N), but 65.2 % of them have been caught off the south of the Bay of Biscay. The middle slope species, recorded only from 1991 accor ding to the development of the deep fishery, were caught between 48 de grees N and 60 degrees N. The northward range extension of upper slope species and the higher frequency of records of continental shelf spec ies from the southern part of the Bay of Biscay coincide with the inve stigations on the warming of the south-north current in the upper slop e of northern Spain and of the south French Atlantic continental shelf . (C) Elsevier, Paris.