Distribution and Habitat
Stout whiting are endemic to Australia, and consist of two apparently disjunct populations; one on the eastern seaboard, the other on the western seaboard. The eastern population has a wider distribution, inhabiting waters from Bustard Head, Queensland to southern New South Wales. The western population exists from Shark Bay in the north to Fremantle in the south. In his 1985 revision of the Sillaginidae, McKay reported the species from as far north as the Gulf of Carpentaria, but did not mention any specimen from this far north in his follow-up catalogue for the FAO.
Stout whiting are found in deeper waters than other Australian sillaginids, inhabiting sandy substrates at depths of 10 to 70 m. juvenile fish of the eastern population inhabit shallower waters for the first year of life, often in large bays and near surf beaches. The fish of the western population spend their entire lives offshore. In northern Australia, the same offshore niche is occupied by the mud whiting, Sillago lutea. In southern Queensland, where it coexists in deeper waters with S. flindersi, the stout whiting shows preference for deep sandy strata with a riverine influence.
Read more about this topic: Stout Whiting
Famous quotes containing the words distribution and/or habitat:
“My topic for Army reunions ... this summer: How to prepare for war in time of peace. Not by fortifications, by navies, or by standing armies. But by policies which will add to the happiness and the comfort of all our people and which will tend to the distribution of intelligence [and] wealth equally among all. Our strength is a contented and intelligent community.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them; and no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical propositions apply.”
—William James (1842–1910)