A recapitulation of the records of tropical fishes from European Atlantic waters shows that 67.6 % were fishes caught from the upper slope, between approximately 200 and 600 m; 19.8 % were fishes caught from the continental shelf; and 13.5 % were specimens caught from the middle slope, between 700 and 1 300 m. Since 1963, the upper slope species have made regular northward range extensions off of south Portugal to north-western Ireland (about 55 degrees 30' N), more and less rapidly, about 30 years for Cyttopsis roseus and only 6 years for Sphoeroides pachygaster. The continental shelf species, observed from 1969 but mostly 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... |