LEGGETT and WHITNEY: WATER TEMPERATURE AND SHAD MIGRATIONS 



and Sykes believed that the shad move south to 

 waters off the Middle Atlantic States in the win- 

 ter. However, they had only one recapture in 

 December. In January or February shad do be- 

 gin to appear off the central Atlantic Coast from 

 North Carolina to Long Island. Confirmation 

 of the conclusions of Talbot and Sykes (1958) 

 came from Walburg and Nichols (1967) who re- 

 ported 49 shad caught at lat 40°N, long 70°41'W 

 (Point A, Figure 2A), January 23 to February 

 2, 1961, by the research vessel Delaware. If 

 mature in the spring, the shad then move either 

 north or south to their home streams and spawn. 

 The shad runs in southern streams occur early 

 in the spring and progressively later northward. 

 One of us (Leggett) has conducted extensive 



tagging studies of Connecticut River shad since 

 1965. From 1965 to 1969, 18,374 mature shad 

 were marked and released in the lower Connect- 

 icut River. In all, 83 of these shad have been 

 recovered along the Atlantic coast from North 

 Carolina to the Bay of Fundy, 66 with complete 

 information as to date and place of recapture. 

 Over 300 shad were recovered in the lower Con- 

 necticut River 1 year or more after tagging. 

 These recaptures, together with coastal recov- 

 eries from 4,500 shad tagged by the U.S. Bureau 

 of Fisheries and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 

 between 1938 and 1949, were plotted on monthly 

 surface temperature charts of the western At- 

 lantic Ocean (U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office, 

 1967; U.S. Coast Guard Oceanographic Unit, 



MARCH 



^13= 



AUGUST 



OCTOBER 



Figure 2. — Atlantic Ocean average sea surface temperatures and associated locations of shad recaptures for se- 

 lected months. Number of recaptures is shown. Point A represents the 49 shad Walburg and Nichols (1967) re- 

 ported caught in a trawl. (Temperature charts adapted from U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office, 1967; inshore 

 segments of isotherms were refined with the aid of surface temperature charts by U.S. Coast Guard Oceanograph- 

 ic Unit, 1969-1971, see footnote 4.) 



665 



