ABSTRACT
Coastal fishing populations have witnessed through centuries the variability of fisheries with years of rich and extremely poor yields separated by just a few years. However, such sharp fluctuations have occurred even before large-scale commercial fisheries. Therefore, the dynamic interaction between fish and the biological, chemical, and physical oceanographic conditions must play a pivotal role in fish recruitment. Events occurring early in the life of fish were deemed responsible for a meaningful part of fish recruitment variability. Since the early 20th century, several hypotheses aimed at explaining such variability, therefore this chapter reviews the processes and mechanisms proposed to influence the mortality of fish larval stages in oceanic and coastal waters by summarizing the findings of the leading hypotheses. The hypotheses reviewed in this chapter are the Critical Period Hypothesis, Aberrant Drift Hypothesis, Migration Triangle Hypothesis, Match-Mismatch Hypothesis, Stable Ocean Hypothesis, Stable Retention Hypothesis, Member/Vagrant Hypothesis, Optimal Environmental Window Hypothesis, Ocean Triads Hypothesis, and Sense Acuity and Behavioral Hypothesis.
