West Coast Hake Biomass Survey on the Africana Voyage 050, January 1987

The objectives of the cruise were to survey by means of trawling the abundance of adult and recruiting hake; to investigate the the diurnal cycle of hake and other demersal species; to investigate the environment and interrelationships of hake and other demersal species; to establish the offshore limit of hake and monkfish distribution and to collect deep-water specimens of fish and cephalopods; to conduct mouth-opening experiments with transducers on each wing of the net, and to compare the mouth opening and fishing capabilities of V doors and Polyvalent doors; to study community interrelationships and assemblages and to collect data on hake and other species from the International Commission for the South-East Atlantic Fisheries (ICSEAF) Division 1.5, ie: north of the South African border.