Subtleties and episodes in the early life of fishes

Fluctuations in the abundance of fishes may be caused by episodic mortalities or by more subtle variability in the daily growth and mortality rates of eggs and larvae. Survival response surfaces are used to illustrate the relative effects of episodic and subtle mortality during early life. It is the subtle variability associated with small changes in growth or mortality rates that may exert the greater effect on recruitment. Massive advective losses of eggs or larvae, failed egg production, and acute contaminant mortalities are examples of episodic events that may impact recruitment significantly but which need not be catastrophic. Stabilization of recruitments through density‐dependent growth rate variability in early life is demonstrated to be potentially important. Whether this mechanism actually is important in the sea remains to be determined.