Abstract

Otolith shape analysis is widely used for fish species identification and stock classification. The morphological structure of anchovy populations was examined with otolith characters using Truss network system. A total of 300 anchovy specimens were collected by commercial fishing vessels from six fishing areas, three from the Black Sea (Trabzon, Sinop, Istanbul), one from the Marmara Sea (Bandırma Gulf) and two from the Aegean Sea (Edremit Gulf, Izmir Gulf) between November 2001 and January 2002. Our data were subjected to univariate statistics of variance (ANOVA) and discriminant function analysis (DFA) by using SPSS 21 software version. Plotting DF1 and DF2 revealed that the Marmara stock was clearly separated from others in the discriminant space. The proportion of specimens correctly classified into their original group was the highest (70%) for the Marmara Sea samples. The most important discriminative otolith characters in distinguishing between the groups for the first and second discriminant functions were otolith width and otolith length. The Marmara Sea is the passageway between the Black Sea and Aegean Sea, and currents or water masses play an important role in its environmental conditions (e.g. temperature, salinity, food). Significant difference in the Marmara sea population may be attributed to geographical and environmental conditions suggesting separate management strategies for the resource sustainability.