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FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



Nova Scotian coast to Massachusetts Bay, and 

 very abundant thence southward to Chesapeake 

 Bay, south of which it gives place to the southern 

 form or intergrades with it ; the southern form has 

 been detected as far north as Woods Hole, but 

 never east of Cape Cod. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — -The silverside 

 is to be found all around the shores of the Gulf 

 from Nova Scotia to Cape Cod, always, however, 

 closely confined to the coastline. They are ex- 

 ceedingly plentiful around the sandy shores of 

 Cape Cod Bay. And while we have seen them 

 from Chelsea Beach in Boston Harbor, from 

 Beverly and from Gloucester, many summers 

 spent on the coast leave us with the impression 

 that the silverside is neither as omnipresent nor 

 as abundant from Massachusetts Bay northward, 

 although large schools of them are often to be 

 seen here and there along the sandy beaches on 

 the Maine coast. Bushels, in fact, have been 

 caught in a single haul of the seine in Casco Bay 

 and very likely could be elsewhere. 



Silversides are seldom seen along the stretches 

 of rocky coast exposed to the open sea, which 

 make up a large part of the northern shore line 

 of the Gulf of Maine. In Passamaquoddy Bay 

 Huntsman tells us 60 "they are largely restricted 

 to brackish water and hence not very common," 

 but they must be rather generally present in 

 suitable situations around the shore line of the 

 Bay of Fundy, being reported from St. John 

 and Kennebecasis Bay, from Annapolis basin 

 and from St. Mary Bay. Nothing is known as to 

 their status along the Nova Scotian coast of the 

 open Gulf of Maine, or even whether there are 

 any silversides there at all. Halifax is the most 

 northerly locality where they are recorded on the 



outer coast of Nova Scotia. 51 But Leim 52 reports 

 them so plentiful in the shallows of the southern 

 side of the Gulf of St. Lawrence that "hardly a 

 seine haul has been made without catching several, 

 and as many as 3,500 have been taken at once" 

 in Malpeque Bay on the north shore of Prince 

 Edward Island, where they are taken in winter 

 through the ice, as well as in summer. Enough 

 of them, in fact, are sometimes caught there to 

 be worth canning. 63 Their abundance there con- 

 trasted with their evident scarcity along outer 

 Nova Scotia suggests the presence of an isolated 

 population (or populations) in suitable situations 

 in the southern side of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 

 able to maintain itself because summer tempera- 

 tures in the shallows there are high enough for its 

 successful propagation. 



Importance. — The chief function of the silverside 

 in the economy of the sea is to feed predaceous 

 fishes such as bluefish, mackerel, and striped bass. 

 The silverside is of no commercial value north of 

 Cape Cod, being too small and too soft to answer 

 the never satisfied demand for bait for the offshore 

 fisheries, but they are very generally used to bait 

 eelpots on the Rhode Island coast, and they are 

 excellent on the table, fried, as whitebait. 



Waxen silverside Menidia beryllina (Cope) 1866 



Jordan and Evermann 1896-1900, p. 797 (Menidia 

 gracilis Gunther). 



Description. — This species resembles the com- 

 mon silverside so closely in general appearance 

 that it would be apt to be overlooked among the 

 schools of the latter were it not paler in color, 



» Contrib. Canadian Biol. (192!) 1922, p. 61. 



•i Cornish (Contr. Canadian Biol. [1902-1905], 1907, No. 9) does not include 

 it in his list of the fishes of Canso. 

 '= Proc. Nova Scotian Inst. Sci., vol. 20, Pt. 2, 1940, p. 38. 

 « Needier, Rept. Fish. Res. Board Canada (1941) 1942, p. 11. 



Figure 163. — Waxen silverside (Menidia beryllina). From Kendall 



