224 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



about 2 inches long. But it is not known how 

 far they may journey while they are at the mercy 

 of currents. After they have taken to the bottom, 

 they are ground fish for the remainder of their 

 lives, only rising into the upper layers in pursuit 

 of food. They are rather sluggish swimmers, as 

 their body form suggests, and even a large one 

 makes only a very feeble resistance when it is 

 hooked. 



When hake first take to bottom many of them 

 do so in very shallow water, fry 2 to 6 inches long 

 being common close below the tide mark among 

 the eelgrass (Zostera); and fish a little larger are 

 often caught by flounder fishermen in the harbors 

 all around the Gulf of Maine. Others, however, 

 seek the ground in somewhat deeper water, where 

 they have an interesting habit of hiding within 

 the living shells of the giant scallop (Pecten 

 magellanicus) . This has often been observed on 

 the outer part of the Continental Shelf off south- 

 ern New England; Nichols and Breder 27 have 

 found little hake hiding in the mantle cavities of 

 scallops in 20 fathoms off New York, and scallop 

 fishermen have informed us that they often find 

 little hake in the scallops that they dredge off the 

 coast of Maine. Both of the common species of 

 hake are known to use this curious refuge (they 

 do not feed on the scallops but merely use their 

 shells as hiding places) , but most of the specimens 

 so taken have proved to be squirrel hake. And 

 the latter adopts this form of commensalism so 

 commonly that Welsh records as many as 27 taken 

 from 59 scallops in one haul of a scallop dredge, 

 and 11 hake from 9 scallops in another haul, 

 besides many others not counted off southern 

 New England, New York, and New Jersey during 

 the summer and autumn of 1913. 



Slightly larger hake of both species, up to 8 to 

 12 inches long, are not only plentiful offshore, but 

 are rather common close inshore in a fathom or 

 two of water, in harbors, and even well up estu- 

 aries. The larger fish usually keep to deeper 

 water, especially in summer, when hake of market- 

 able sizes are most plentiful below 20 fathoms, 

 and when only a few large ones are caught in less 

 than 10 fathoms of water. But this rule, like 

 most others, has its exceptions. For instance, we 

 once saw a white hake of about 8 pounds caught 

 from a float in Northeast Harbor, Maine, in about 



27 Zoologies, N. Y. Zool. Roc, vol. 9, 1927, p. 172. 



10 feet of water, in July (in 1922). On the other 

 hand, hake of both the species in question are to 

 be caught in the deepest parts of the Gulf, and 

 white hake have been taken down to 545 fathoms 

 at least, on the offshore slope of Georges Bank. 



Both of these hake haunt soft bottom chiefly, 

 few being caught on the gravelly or shelly grounds 

 that are so prolific of cod and haddock, or on 

 rocky grounds. And it has been our experience 

 that the whites are the more strictly mud fish of 

 the pair. 



The temperatures in which hakes of different 

 ages are found cover the entire range proper to the 

 Gulf except perhaps the very lowest. At the one 

 extreme many of the youngest fry that are seen 

 swimming at the surface in the west central part 

 of the Gulf in summer are in water as warm as 

 68° to 70° F., while young hake are in still higher 

 temperatures west and south from Cape Cod if 

 they are at the surface. And the somewhat larger 

 fry found on our beaches a little below tide mark 

 may be in water as warm as 60° locally. But the 

 great majority of the hakes living deeper are in 

 water at least as cool as 50° throughout their later 

 lives, most of them in temperatures lower than 

 45° F. 



At the other extreme, all of the hakes living 

 around the inner slopes of the Gulf at depths less 

 than 50 fathoms experience temperatures as low 

 as 35° to 37° F. in late winter and early spring; 

 as low as 33° to 34° locally if they are living as 

 shoal as 20 fathoms, which many of them do. 

 But the fact that the bottom temperatures at the 

 particular stations on the Grand Banks (all on 

 the southern part) where white hake have been 

 reported by the Newfoundland Fisheries Eesearch 

 Commission have all been between about 42° and 

 about 33° F. (5.5° C. and 0.6 C), and that they 

 were not taken on other parts of the Bank where 

 the bottom is colder, suggests that they tend to 

 avoid regions where the temperature is as low as 

 32° F. or lower. And this finds some corrobora- 

 tion in the report (see p. 228) that hake tend to 

 withdraw in autumn from Passamaquoddy Bay, 

 where the water chills at least as low as 32° at 

 some time during some winters. 



Food. — Less is known of the diet of the hakes 

 than of the cod, the haddock or the pollock. 

 However, it is certain that they are not shell 

 eaters to any extent, for it is seldom that their 

 stomachs contain even the smaller univalve or 



