114 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



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Figure 50. — Menhaden {Brevoortia tyrannus). A, egg; B 

 larva, newly hatched, 4.5 mm.; C, larva, 23 mm.; D 

 young fry, 33 mm. A-D, after Kuntz, and Radcliffe. 



Color. — Dark blue, green, blue gray, or blue 

 brown above, with silvery sides, belly, and fins, 

 and with a strong yellow or brassy luster. There 

 is a conspicuous dusky spot on each side close 

 behind the gill opening, with a varying number of 

 smaller dark spots farther back, arranged in 

 irregular rows. 



Size. — Adidt menhaden average 12 to 15 inches 

 in length, and from two-thirds to one pound in 

 weight. One 18 inches long was taken at Woods 

 Hole in 1876, and a fish 20 inches long has been 

 reported. The heaviest of which we have heard 

 was one of 1 pound 13 ounces, taken at Orient, 

 N. Y. 



Habits. — The menhaden, like the herring, almost 

 invariably travels in schools of hundreds or thou- 

 sands of individuals, swimming closely side by 

 side and tier above tier. In calm weather they 

 often come to the surface where their identity 

 can be recognized by the ripple they make, for 

 pogies, like herring, make a much more compact 

 disturbance than mackerel do, and "a much bluer 

 and heavier commotion than herring, which hardly 

 make more of a ripple than does a light breeze 

 passing over the water," as W. F. Clapp has 



stated to us. Also, pogies as they feed frequently 

 lift their snouts out of water, which we have never 

 seen herring do, while they break the water with 

 their dorsal fins, also with their tails. And the 

 brassy hue of their sides catches the eye (as we 

 have often seen), if one rows close to a school 

 in calm weather. 



It is chiefly on warm, still, sunny days that 

 the menhaden come to the surface, sinking in 

 bad weather; and they are said to come up more 

 often on the flood tide than on the ebb. It is 

 also said (this we cannot vouch for) that the 

 fish work inshore on the flood tide and offshore 

 on the ebb. 



Food. — The menhaden, formerly thought to 

 subsist on mud, is now known to feed chiefly 

 on microscopic plants (particularly diatoms) and 

 on the smallest Crustacea. 30 It sifts these out of 

 the water with a straining apparatus in the shape 

 of successive layers of comb-like gill rakers as 

 efficient as our finest tow nets. No other Gulf 

 of Maine fish has a filtering apparatus comparable 

 to that of the pogy, nor has it any rival in the 



*• For a detailed account of the food and of the branchial sieve of the men- 

 haden, see Peck (Bull., U. S. Fish Comm., vol. 13, 1894, pp. 113-124, pis. 1-8. 



