ASSESSMENT OF ABUNDANCE AND BIOMASS OF THE EUROPEAN ANCHOVY (<i>ENGRAULIS ENCRASICOLUS</i>) BREEDERS IN THE NORTH-EASTERN BLACK SEA BASED ON THE DATA FROM ICHTHYOPLANKTON SURVEYS
Estimation of changes in abundance and biomass of the European anchovy breeders along the Caucasian coast of the Black Sea is made. Ichthyoplankton surveys have been applied as the main research method. The samples were collected with the ichthyoplankton conical net during the mass spawning of the thermophile marine fish species in the Black Sea (May-September). Trawling was conducted in the upper water layers; half a diameter of the net was immersed. It has been found out that, in summer, European anchovy is widely distributed over its whole habitat and keeps to the upper water layers above the layer of thermocline. In the North-Eastern Black Sea, first anchovy eggs occur in ichthyoplankton catches in May, and the spawning season ends in September. The peak of spawning falls on the summer months. Based on the data of ichthyoplankton net catches, it is characteristic for anchovy eggs to prevail in the layer above 20 m depth or more during the entire spawning season; by contrast, early larvae are most often recorded in the coastal waters and shallow waters of the shelf above the depth up to 50 m. According to the estimations, in total, from 14 to 380 million European anchovy breeders were distributed over the shelf of the North-Eastern Black Sea in the summer seasons of 2001-2018; their biomass amounted to 100-3000 t.