FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



49 



much larger ones, 7 to 11 inches long by that 

 month; i. e., nearly ready for birth. Similarly, 

 we have taken females with embryos 9 to lOK 

 inches long in November, on the Cholera Bank 

 near New York Harbor. And it now seems 

 established that most of the young are born on the 

 offshore wintering grounds. 27 But dogfish so 

 small as evidently to have been newborn are oc- 

 casionally taken along southern New England 

 and in the Gulf in early summer; also on Nantucket 

 Shoals where the Albatross II trawled some of 

 10^ to 13 inches in August, showing that the 

 season of production extends through the spring, or 

 even into the summer as in 1905 when females 

 taken off Gloucester in July gave birth to young 

 on capture. 28 



General range. — Both sides of the North Atlantic, 

 chiefly in the temperate and subarctic belt; also 

 both sides of the northern Pacific; 29 and repre- 

 sented in the corresponding thermal belt of the 

 southern hemisphere by a relative (or relatives) 

 so close that it is doubtful whether they differ in 

 any recognizable way from the spiny-dog of the 

 north. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. The spiny dog- 

 fish ("dogfish" or "dog" in common parlance) makes 

 up for the comparative rarity of other sharks in 

 the Gulf of Maine by its obnoxious abundance. 

 To mention all the localities from which it has been 

 reported there woidd be simply to list every seaside 

 villnse and fishing ground from Cape Cod to Cape 

 Sable. It is as familiar, too, on the offshore banks 

 as it is along the coast; also along outer Nova 

 Scotia, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, on the Grand 

 Banks, and along the east coast of Newfoundland 

 to southeastern Labrador. There is no record of 

 it from the North American coast north of Hamil- 

 ton Inlet, but stray specimens have been taken 

 along the southwest coast of Greenland. 30 To the 

 southward, fishermen are familiar with it in season 



** Females that we saw trawled oft Block Island in 60-65 fathoms In late 

 January 1950, pave birth to young on the deck of the vessel. 



» Mclntiro, Kept. Comm. Fish. Game Massachusetts, (1905) 1906, p. 108. 



» We have found no consistent differences between North Atlantic and 

 North Pacific specimens. For further discussion of this point, and further 

 details as to the occurrence of the spiny-dog in the two sides of the North At- 

 lantic, see Bigelow and Schroeder (Fishes of the Western North Atlantic, 

 Pt. 1, 1948, pp. 453, 463). 



<• Jensen (Selachians of Greenland, Mindeskr. Japetus Steenstrup, Pt. 2, 

 No. 30, 1914, p. 7) lists several definite records of this species at Sukkertoppen 

 and near Holsteinborg, West Greenland. 



as far as Cape Lookout, N. C, and a few stray 

 even to southern Florida and to Cuba. 31 



Dogfish are seasonal visitors on the coast, strik- 

 ing in about as early along New Jersey (March), 

 and even on Georges Bank (March-AprU) , as 

 along North Carolina. In the inner parts of the 

 Gulf of Maine the date of the first heavy run of 

 dogfish varies widely from year to year and from 

 place to place. We have not heard of them there 

 before May. But the period of freedom may close 

 as early as the last half of the month, in some years. 



In 1903, for example, they had appeared as far 

 north as Penobscot Bay by the middle of May. 

 And while it is not untU June that they usually 

 arrive in numbers in the Massachusetts Bay re- 

 gion, it is sometimes impossible to set gill or drift 

 nets anywhere between Cape Cod and Cape 

 Elizabeth after the first days of that month, so 

 numerous are they. In 1913 the first heavy run 

 of dogfish struck Ipswich Bay on June 14, and they 

 appeared there at about the same date in 1905, 

 but there is much local variation in this respect. 

 In 1903, for example, they did not appear until 

 early July at Provincetown, though swarming a 

 month earlier in Massachusetts Bay, in Ipswich 

 Bay, and off Penobscot Bay. But in 1920 they 

 appeared at Provincetown by May 25 to 26 when 

 one set of mackerel traps caught 23 barrels of them, 

 and another 21 barrels. They usually strike in 

 all along the northern Maine and west Nova 

 Scotia coasts by the end of June; but few are seen 

 until late in July in Passamoquoddy Bay. They 

 have been recorded as early as July 1 near Raleigh, 

 on the Newfoundland side of the Strait of Belle 

 Isle, but they are not caught in any numbers in 

 the inner parts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence until 

 well into July, and they have not been reported 

 from southeastern Labrador until early m Sep- 

 tember. 32 



In the southern part of its range, from North 

 Carolina to New York, the spiny dogfish is a spring 

 and autumn transient only. West of Cape Cod 

 (at Woods Hole, that is, and along Long Island) 



si Repeated reports of it as plentiful along eastern Florida seem to have 

 referred to some other shark; the basis for similar reports from Cuba and 

 Trinidad doubtless was the Cuban dogfish, Sguaius cudfnji* Rivero. 



>■ See Templeman (Res. Bull. 15, Newfoundland Dept. Nat. Res., 1941, 

 pp. 56, 64) for dates of arrival around the coast of Newfoundland in different 

 years. 



