FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



11 



Being blind, it doubtless finds its food by its 

 greatly specialized olfactory apparatus. It feeds 

 chiefly on fish, dead or disabled, though no doubt 

 any other carrion would serve it equally well. 

 And it is known to prey on marine annelid worms 

 also, at least in Norwegian waters. It is best 

 known for its troublesome habit of boring into 

 the body cavities of hooked or gilled fishes, eat- 

 ing out the intestines first and then the meat, and 

 leaving nothing but a bag of skin and bones, inside 

 of which the hag itself is often hauled aboard, or 

 clinging to the sides of a fish it has just attacked. 

 In fact, it is only in this way, or entangled on 

 lines, that hags ordinarily are taken or seen. 



Being worthless itself, the hag is an unmitigated 

 nuisance, and a particularly loathsome one owing 

 to its habit of pouring out slime from its mucous 

 sacs in quantity out of all proportion to its small 

 size. One hag, it is said, can easily fill a 2-gallon 

 bucket, nor do we think this any exaggeration. 



In American waters the commercial fishes most 

 often damaged by it are haddock and the hakes 

 (Urophycis) , these being the species most often 

 fished for with long lines or with gill nets over the 

 type of bottom the hag frequents. But it some- 

 times damages cod also, and European authors 

 describe it as attacking ling (Molva) and other 

 members of the cod tribe, herring, mackerel, 

 sturgeon, and even mackerel sharks under similar 

 circumstances. 



Breeding habits. — -The hag was formerly believed 

 to be a functional hermaphrodite, with its single sex 

 organ first developing sperm in the posterior por- 

 tion, eggs later in the anterior portion. However, 

 recent detailed studies of the sex organ appear to 

 show that such is not the case, but that either the 

 male portion of the common sex organ matures 

 in a given individual with the female portion 

 remaining rudimentary, or vice versa." 



It has long been known that the eggs are few 

 in number (only 19 to 30 having been counted in 

 any one female) and large (up to 25 mm. in length), 

 and the horny shell has a cluster of anchor-tipped 

 filaments at each end that make the eggs easy of 

 identification. Until 1900 none had been found 

 that certainly had been laid naturally. In that 

 year, however, hag eggs were reported from the 

 western part of Georges Bank and from the south 



» Seo Blpelow and Schroeder, Fishes Western North Atlantic, Pt. 1, ch. 2, 

 1918. pp. 3.V-36, fur references. 



coast of Newfoundland by Dean (1900) ; " from the 

 neighborhood of the Faroe Islands by Jensen; I5 

 from Norway by Hjort; I6 off Morocco bv Koe- 

 foed. 17 And they have been reported subsequently 

 from the Bay of Fundy by Huntsman, from 

 Frenchman Bay on the coast of Maine by Conel. 18 

 The eggs are deposited on bottom, where they stick 

 firmly to fixed objects of one sort or another by 

 their terminal filaments and by threads of slime. 



The hag spawns throughout its range; also it 

 spawns throughout the year, for females nearing 

 ripeness and others nearly spent have been re- 

 corded for winter and spring, as well as summer 

 and autumn, in one part of its range or another. 

 The few eggs so far reported have been from depths 

 of 50 to 150 fathoms, most of them trawled on 

 mud, clay, or sand bottom. 



We need only add that, to judge from their 

 behavior in aquaria, the females cease to feed at 

 the approach of sexual maturity, as many other 

 fishes do. Newly hatched hags have never been 

 seen, but inasmuch as the smallest yet described 

 (about 2)i inches long), probably not long out of 

 the egg, already resembled the adult in external 

 appearance there is no reason to suppose that the 

 hag passes through a larval stage greatly different 

 from the adult. 



General range. — Arctic seas, and both coasts of 

 the north Atlantic; Murman Coast and northern 

 Norway south regularly to the Irish Sea, and to 

 Morocco as a stray in the East; northern part of 

 Davis Strait, south to the latitude of Cape Fear, 

 N. C, in the west. It is represented in the cor- 

 responding temperature-belt of the Southern 

 I li misphere by a form (or forms) resembling it so 

 closely that it is doubtful whether any sharp line 

 can be drawn between them. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — Apart from 

 one record for the northern part of Davis Strait, 

 the most northerly reports of the hag off the 

 American coast are from southern Newfoundland 

 and from the Grand Banks. 19 But it is generally 

 distributed along outer Nova Scotia at appropriate 

 depths. And it is only too common in the Gulf 



» Mem. N. Y. Acad. Bel., vol. 2, Pt. 2, Art. 2, 1900. 



" Vlden. Meddel. Dansk nstui hist. Forenlng, 1900, p. 1. 



a Rept. Norwelglan Fishery and Mar. Invest., vol. 1, 1900, No. 1, ch. 4. p. 75. 



" Rept. Michael Sars North Atlantic Exped., Zool., vol. 4, No. 1,1927, p. 18 



» Science, N. Ser., vol. 75, 1932, pp. 19-20. 



" It has not been reported for certain from West Greenland (so far as we 

 can learn), from the outer coast of Labrador, or within the Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence thouch It Is to be expected In the deeper parts of the latter. 



