FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



279 



with the fish merely tending to scatter "from 

 population centers, a characteristic phenomenon 

 with nonmigratory animals." S1 But some of them 

 may stray for considerable distances. Thus winter 

 flounders tagged at Waquoit Bay, near Woods 

 Hole, in 1931 were recovered off Chatham, on 

 the outer coast of Cape Cod, and on Nantucket 

 Shoals. The case of one that was tagged near 

 Block Island on April 17, 1941, and was recaught 

 on the central part of Georges Bank (lat. 41°45' N., 

 long. 67°06' W.) on August 27, 1945, is especially 

 interesting, 62 as showing that some interchange 

 does take place between the inshore and offshore 

 populations of adult fish. 



The normal distribution of the winter flounder 

 covers a wide range of temperature at one season 

 or another, from a minimum close to the freezing 

 point of salt water around Newfoundland, in 

 Nova Scotian waters, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 

 and in the shoaler parts of the Gulf of Maine in 

 late winter, to a maximum of about 64°-66° F. 

 in shallow water in the southwestern part of the 

 Gulf in summer, and of perhaps about 68°-70° in 

 the southern part of its range. 



They sometimes perish by the thousands in 

 very hot spells of summer weather, if they are 

 trapped in shallow enclosed bays, as happened in 

 Moriches Bay, Long Island, N. Y., in 1917, be- 

 tween July 29 and August 4, when the ah tem- 

 perature rose to 82°-89°, and the temperature of 

 the water on the very shallow flats nearly as high, 

 probably. 63 But w T e have never heard of this 

 happening in the Gulf of Maine where cooler 

 water is always close to hand. On the other 

 hand, they may succumb to anchor ice in winter 

 if they are overtaken in very shoal water in a 

 severe freeze, for dead "flounders" of one sort or 

 another are sometimes reported in such locations 

 after unusually severe weather. And observa- 

 tions at Woods Hole have shown that freezing 

 temperatures (say 30° to 29°) drive them down 

 into slightly warmer water. 



Experience at the Boothbay and Woods Hole 

 hatcheries, combined with the results of the trawl 

 fishery (p. 283), proves that those living a few 

 fathoms down are as active in winter as they are 

 in summer, both north and south of Cape Cod. 



" Perlmutter, Bull. Blngbam Oceanopr. Coll., vol. 1 1 , Art. 2, 1947, pp. 26, 27, 

 " This specimen Is on display at the Laboratory of the U. S. Fish and Wild- 

 life Service at Woods Hole. 



« This occurrence Is described by Nichols (Copeia, No. 55, 1918, pp. 37-39), 

 also by Nichols and Breder, Zoologica, N. Y. Zool. Soc, vol. 9, 1927, p. 79. 



Bean, it is true, has described the winter flounder 

 as going into "partial hibernation in the mud in 

 winter, 54 but (as Breder 55 has pointed out) the 

 reason the hook-and-line fishermen cannot take 

 them in late winter or early spring may simply 

 be that they will not bite then, this being the 

 spawning period when winter flounders fast, as 

 so many other fishes do. 



According to Sullivan 56 diatoms are the first 

 food taken after the yolk of the larval flounder is 

 absorbed. A little later they begin preying on the 

 smaller Crustacea, and Sullivan invariably found 

 isopods in the stomachs of fry that had just 

 passed their metamorphosis. A series of young 

 flounders 1 to 4)j inches long from Casco Bay 

 were found by Welsh to have fed chiefly on isopod 

 crustaceans, with lesser amounts of copepods, 

 amphipods, crabs, and shrimps, which together 

 formed 36 percent of the stomach contents; worms 

 (39 percent); mollusks (2 percent); and various 

 unidentifiable material (22 percent). Linton 57 

 who examined about 398 young flounders of 

 various sizes at Woods Hole, likewise found them 

 feeding chiefly on amphipods and on other small 

 Crustacea, together with annelid worms. And 

 his tables of stomach contents show an increase 

 in the ratio of mollusks to Crustacea as the fish 

 grow. The adult winter flounder, like the yellow- 

 tail (p. 271), is limited by its small mouth to a diet 

 of the smaller invertebrates and of fish fry. 

 Sometimes they are full of shrimps, amphipods, 

 small crabs, or other crustaceans; sometimes of 

 ascidians, seaworms (Nereis), or other annelids; 

 or of bivalve or univalve mollusks. Three hun- 

 dred "seed" clams, for example, were found in an 

 11-inch flounder at St. Andrews, New Brunswick. 58 

 And it seems that they often bite off clam siphons 

 that protude from the sand. They also eat squid, 

 holothurians, and hydroids; occasionally they 

 capture small fish; and they sometimes take bits 

 of seaweed. Examination of the stomachs of 

 adults taken at Woods Hole in February 1921 by 

 Breder showed that they cease feeding when they 

 are about to spawn. 



In spite of its small mouth the winter flounder 

 bites very readily on clams, pieces of seaworm. or 



« Bull. r,0, New York State Mus., Zool., 9, 1903, p. 778. 

 » Bull. U. S. Bur. Fish., vol. 38, 1923, p. 311. 

 - Trans. Amer. Fisheries Soc, vol. 44, 1914-15, No. 1, p. 138. 

 " App. 4, Report U. S. Comm. Fish. (1921) 1922, pp. 3-14. 

 » Fisheries Research Board of Canada, Progress Reports of the Atlantic 

 Coast Stations, No. 52. January 1052. p. 3. 



