FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



111 



fish going in or out of the Bay of Fundy," is 

 especially significant as emphasizing the localiza- 

 tion of the St. John shad near the parent river. 



The behavior of the St. John river shad raises 

 an interesting question, as to the source of the 

 young fish that sometimes congregate in the 

 Bays and among the islands along the coast of 

 Maine (Casco Bay especially), for there seem to 

 be too many of them, in some years, to be credited 

 to the small runs that still frequent the rivers of 

 Maine (unless runs may have been overlooked of 

 late in other rivers there). 



Immature shad, up to 2 to 2% pounds in weight 

 are observed more or less commonly in Cape Cod 

 Bay near Provincetown in summer or autumn and 

 in the inner parts of Massachusetts Bay (some- 

 times taken in the traps at Beverly or Manchester), 

 and off Cape Ann. 14 Spent shad up to 10 pounds 

 in weight (averaging about 5 pounds), are some- 

 times reported by fishermen off the coast of Maine 

 west of Penobscot Bay; near the Isles of Shoals; 

 off York Beach, and off Cape Ann, in summer, 

 autumn, and even in December. 15 



The few mature shad with ripening sexual organs 

 that are picked up by the haddock netters between 

 Cape Ann and Portland in April and May, most 

 often about the Isles of Shoals and Boon Island, 18 

 probably are headed for the rivers of Maine. 



Larger numbers of fish are seined in September 

 and October, in the neighborhood of Mount Desert 

 Island, where they have been the object of a frozen 

 fish industry in some years. 17 These, like the green 

 fish mentioned above, seem far too numerous to be 

 accounted for by the small production that still 

 takes place in the rivers of Maine. Some few of 

 them, it seems, are Bay of Fundy fish, for one of a 

 batch tagged near Mount Desert Rock in August 

 1947, was recaptured in Kings County, New 

 Brunswick (St. John River system) the following 

 June, and a second in the Petitcodiac River that 

 July, while a third, tagged farther west on the 

 coast of Maine in August or September 1948 was 



" 502 barrels (about 100,400 lb.) were taken in one set of mackerel pounds 

 at Provincetown in June 1910; the traps picked up numbers of shad of about 

 14 Inches from June 20 to July 6, 1921, at Magnolia and Beverly, where the 

 catch was 10,300 pounds In 1945; and 14 shad 11 to 1554 Inches long were 

 taken In one set of traps at Barnstable, on Cape Cod Bay, October 3, 1950. 



" 135,000 pounds of those large spent fish were caught near Gloucester In 

 the autumn of 1915; 125 barrels of 2- to 5-pound shad, some spent, near Seguln 

 Island, July 19, 1925. 



" A series of shad from that region, examined by the late W. W. Welsh In 

 April and May 1913, averaged 5 pounds, all with well-developed sex organs. 



" About 250,000 pounds were brought In to the local freezers yearly in 1913, 

 1814. and 1915. 



recaptured in the St. John River in May 1950. 

 But it seems established that most of the medium- 

 sized shad and larger now found in our Gulf are 

 immigrants from the south, growing and fattening 

 on the rich supply of plankton they find there, 

 but returning to the rivers west and south of Cape 

 Cod to spawn. 



Direct evidence of this is that one tagged in 

 Chesapeake Bay was recaught at Race Point, at 

 the tip of Cape Cod, 39 days later; 18 one also was 

 recaptured near Gloucester and another near 

 Portland that had been tagged in the Hudson 

 River, while 3 out of 1,380 tagged in New York 

 Bay were recaptured in the Bay of Fund}' after 

 37 days, 75 days, and 85 days, respectively, and one 

 tagged off Fire Island, N. Y., was recaught at St. 

 John. New Brunswick, after 39 days. 19 On the 

 other hand, 18 shad, from a batch of 236 that were 

 tagged ne;ir Mount Desert Rock in August 1947 

 were recaptured the next spring scattered along in 

 different stream systems from the Connecticut to 

 the Altamaha in Georgia. Others, from this same 

 batch, were recaptured in the Connecticut, in the 

 Hudson, on the coast of New Jersey, and in the 

 Pamlico River, X. C, during the next two springs. 

 And three others, from a batch of 431 tagged 

 farther west along the coast of Maine in the sum- 

 mer and autumn of 1948, were recaptured in the 

 Hudson River; three in Chesapeake Bay, and one 

 in I lie Pamlico River, N. C. 20 



The shad that take part in this intermigration 

 must winter somewhere between their northern 

 feeding grounds whence they have vanished 

 wholly by mid-autumn, and their southern breed- 

 ing streams near which they do not appear until 

 spring. But it is not yet known where they pass 

 the cold months, how deep down they go, bow far 

 offshore, or how active they are then. 



Still other shad are known to make very long 

 journeys that can hardly be fitted into any regular 

 migratory pattern, and from which they may never 

 find their way back. Thus one that was tagged 

 in the lower St. Lawrence River was recaught on 

 Brown's Bank 258 days later; a second, from that 

 same batch, was recaught in Cumberland basin, 

 near Amherst, Nova Scotia, at the head of the 

 Bay of Fundy after 322 days; a third at Province- 



" Vladykov, Trans. Amer. Fish. Soc, vol. 67, 1938. p. 64. 

 '■ Information supplied by C. E. Atkinson, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

 "Information supplied by E. H. Hollls of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife 

 Service. 



