UIGLIlV ai,d BURNS: DISTRIBLTION AND BIOLOGY OF MYSIDS 



bottoms of ships durins' World War II when 

 convoys of merchant sliips were making fre- 

 quent and rather regular transoceanic voyages. 



Neomysis americana (S. I. Smith, 1873) 

 Geographic Distribution 



N. americana is the most common mysid in- 

 habiting the northeastern coastal waters of the 

 United States and undoubtedly the most abun- 

 dant mysid in the western North Atlantic Ocean. 

 It is strictly a North American species, having 

 been reported only from the Gulf of St. Law- 

 rence south to Virginia. It is much more abun- 

 dant and widely distributed between Virginia 

 and New England than in the northern part of 

 its range. 



The NMFS collection originally contained 

 over 2 million specimens of this species — more 

 numerous than any other mysid in the collection, 

 but for purposes of analysis the larger lots were 

 subsampled. Subsamples totaling 8,451 spec- 

 imens from 168 samples (Figure 17; Burns 

 and Wigiey, Table 18) were examined. The 

 geographic distribution of specimens in this col- 

 lection ranges from off Nova Scotia, near the 

 mouth of the Bay of Fundy, south to Chesapeake 

 Bay. 



Most of the specimens are from two regions 

 (Figure 17): (1) eastern Georges Bank to 

 Rhode Island, and (2) from northern New Jer- 

 sey to Chesapeake Bay. The gap in distribution 

 between these two areas (off Long Island) ap- 

 pears to be more pronounced in offshore waters 

 than inshore. Bigelow and Sears (1939) also 

 encountered a Ijroad hiatus in the occurrence of 

 this species in the offshore waters of eastern 

 Long Island. Yet, inshore in the New York re- 

 gion it has been reported from Great South Bay, 

 Long Island (Smith, 1879) and from Long Is- 

 land Sound (Verrill, Smith, and Harger, 1873; 

 Smith, 1879; and Richards and Riley, 1967). 

 The only record from offshore Long Island 

 known to us is that rejiorted by Grice and Hart 

 (see footnote 3) which indicated the presence 

 of this s])ecies in two plankton samples taken 

 at station 13 located at lat 40°44' N and long 

 71°41' W (water depth, 64 m). The above rec- 



FiGUEE 17. — (ieographic distribution of Ncnmyxis amer- 

 icnna haseA on specimens in the collertion at the NMFS 

 Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole. 



ords indicate merely a restricted occurrence or 

 low aljundance in the offshore New York region, 

 not a complete break in distribution. 



Samples from the Georges Bank area during 

 summer and winter revealed a similar distrilni- 

 tion of N. americana in both seasons. The spe- 

 cies was pre.sent over most of the bank, with 

 highest concentrations in the central part, the 

 same area where Whiteley (1948) also found 

 them to be most abundant. 



737 



