The AREPE (Avaliação de Recursos Pelágicos) cruises were carried out by the Department of Oceanography at the Federal University of Rio Grande in the South Brazilian Continental Shelf, a region between Cape Santa Marta (28°30'S) and Chuí (34°30'S). In each of the five cruises, 21 transects (14 on the 4th cruise) perpendicular to the coastline were conducted aboard NOc. Atlantic, resulting in approximately 100 oceanographic stations (62 on the 4th cruise) spaced 20 nautical miles (~ 37 km) apart, bounded to the east by the 200 m isobath (Vasconcellos & Castello, 1995; Marcon, 2003). Ichthyoplankton samples were obtained with oblique trawls using a 0.60 m diameter net with 300 µm mesh equipped with a flowmeter, at a speed of approximately 1.3 ms-1 (2.5 kt). The trawls were performed between the surface and 5 m above the bottom in shallow water, and from 200 m depth to the surface in the deep stations. The samples were fixed and preserved in formaldehyde solution, buffered with sodium tetraborate, diluted in sea water with a final approximate concentration of 4%. The filtered volume was calculated and used to standardize the abundance of fish eggs and larvae per 100 m3 of filtered water (Vasconcellos et al., 1998; Marcon, 2003).