190 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



from the Isles of Shoals to the mouth of Casco 

 Bay; on "Seguin" and "Kettle" bottoms off 

 Seguin Island; on the "Matinicus ground" off 

 Matinicus Island; on the "Grumpy" off Isle au 

 Haut; in the neighborhood of Mount Desert Rock 

 and of Mount Desert Island; and on sundry small 

 ridges thence eastward to the mouth of the Bay of 

 Fundy. Rich, 84 in fact, lists no less than 175 cod 

 grounds around the inner parts of the Gulf, and 

 many other smaller spots all up and down the 

 coast yield a few cod to the small-boat fishermen. 



The following summary of the landings of fresh 

 cod from several of the more important Gulf of 

 Maine grounds for 1935 85 illustrates their relative 

 productivity at that time, and there is no reason 

 to suppose that the situation has altered signifi- 

 cantly since then, so far as the numbers of cod 

 are concerned. 



Locality 



Georges Bank 



Browns Bank 



South Channel.. - 



Cashes Ledge 



Stellwagen Bank. 

 Fippenies Bank.. 



Jeffreys Ledge 



Nantucket Shoals 

 Platts Bank 



Pounds 



21,598,594 



9, 288, 806 



2, 993, 580 



602, 901 



284, 265 



48, 865 



42, 430 



26, 075 



20, 060 



Percentage of 

 cod in total 



catch of 

 ground fish 



26 

 30 

 18 

 18 

 37 

 19 

 21 

 14 

 18 



Cod, for some reason not yet explained, become 

 scarcer passing up the Bay of Fundy, and very 

 few are caught near the head, though there are 

 plenty about the mouth of the Bay. 



Movements of cod in the Gulf of Maine. — The 

 young cod that are hatched within our Gulf tend 

 to follow around the general coastline from north- 

 east to southwest, during the period while they 

 are adrift, as has been shown by Fish 86 very 

 clearly for the Cape Ann — Massachusetts Bay 

 spawning grounds. Our few captures of pelagic 

 cod fry have, in fact, all been in the southwestern 

 part of the Gulf, in which they agree with those 

 of haddock, silver hake, and most of the common 

 flatfishes. As Fish 87 pointed out, the fry from 

 eggs that are spawned north of Cape Ann and on 

 the Massachusetts Bay grounds have ample time 

 to become distributed over the offshore banks 



" Rept. U. S. Comm. Fish. (1929), 1930, App. 3, table 2, pp. 85-86; table 

 3, p. 96. 



» Most recent year for which catches for the smaller inshore grounds are 

 listed separately in the published catch statistics. 



'• Bull. U. S. Bur. Fish., vol. 43, 1929, pp. 266-290. 



" Bull. U. S. Bur. Fish., vol. 43, 1929, p. 289. 



before they seek the bottom (with 14 to 30 days' 

 drift as eggs, and two months or more as pelagic 

 larvae). They might even circle around to the 

 coast of western Nova Scotia and so to the eastern 

 Maine coast. And fry from the Georges Bank 

 spawning grounds would have ample time to do 

 this in years when they are neither held over the 

 Bank by the local circulation nor carried out over 

 the continental slope, to be lost, as happens in the 

 case of the haddock in some years (p. 212). Our 

 Gulf may also receive contributions of cod larvae 

 and fry drifting past Cape Sable, from outer Nova 

 Scotia waters farther east. On the other hand, 

 the cod fry that are taken at Woods Hole in spring 

 may have come from Nantucket Shoals. But 

 those that we found as far south as the Capes of 

 the Chesapeake in April 1930, probably were the 

 product of the spawning that has long been known 

 to take place in winter off New York and off 

 New Jersey. 



Little is known of the wanderings of the cod in 

 the Gulf of Maine from the time they first seek 

 the bottom when 1% inches long or so, until they 

 are large enough to be caught on hook and line, 

 say 10 or 11 inches long, or l}{ to 2 years old. 

 Young fry, however, from 2 to 4 or 5 inches long 

 and upwards, have been trawled often enough 

 offshore as well as inshore, and they have been 

 found in the stomachs of older cod often enough 

 to show that they soon become distributed all 

 around the Gulf, including the outer part of the 

 Bay of Fundy where it seems that none are hatched 

 (p. 193). But they usually are much more plenti- 

 ful on the rough inshore bottoms than on the 

 smoother offshore banks. A reasonable explana- 

 tion is that if young cod take to the bottom on 

 rough, iocky groimds, or among algae, they have 

 a fair chance of escaping their various enemies, 

 but that thej T find no hiding places on the smooth 

 bottoms that characterize extensive areas on 

 Georges Bank and on Nantucket shoals, hence, 

 are soon decimated. 



Some of the larger Gulf of Maine cod probably 

 travel very little out of the spawning season, 

 except as they gradually exhaust the food supply 

 in one spot and are therefore driven to move on 

 over the bottom to fresh foraging grounds. Such 

 fish usually are dark and dull colored, with large 

 heads, a sign of scanty diet. Thus tagging 

 experiments, involving many thousands of fish, 

 have shown that a large percentage of the rather 



