FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



537 



quoddy Bay by Berrill; 63 and from Frenchman 

 Bay near Mount Desert by Procter and others, 64 

 were in such early stages of incubation that they 

 must have been spawned close at hand. And this 

 also applies to some isolated eggs that were col- 

 lected at about the 20-fathom contour line off 

 northern North Carolina, 65 by the Dana. Neither 

 is there any reason to suppose that veils farther 

 advanced in incubation, that have been taken in 

 the inner parts of the Gulf of Maine (p. 541); at 

 Woods Hole; and at Newport (p. 537), had come 

 from any great distance. Furthermore, large 

 adult fish are present in abundance inshore 

 throughout the spawning season, which would 

 hardly be the case if they moved offshore or into 

 deep water to spawn. On the other hand, veils 

 that could not have been spawned long before 

 have also been met with near the 1,000 to 1,100 

 fathom (2,000-meter) contour line over the conti- 

 nental slope off North Carolina 66 and at about the 

 same relative position over the slope south of the 

 Newfoundland Banks. 67 



It appears, in short, that the American goosefish 

 spawns indifferently in shoal water and in deep. 

 It differs in this respect from its European relative, 

 which moves offshore and down the slope for the 

 purpose, to near the 1,000-fathom contour, to 

 judge from the localities where the newly hatched 

 larvae have been collected in the eastern North 

 Atlantic. 68 



The presence of egg veils off North Carolina; 

 near Newport 69 and near Woods Hole along south- 

 ern New England; in the Gulf of Maine (p. 541); 

 and over the continental slope south of the New- 

 foundland Bank; with the capture of a very small 

 (4-inch) specimen on the Grand Bank (p. 540) 

 shows that the American goosefish breeds through- 

 out its geographic range. 



The eggs are shed in remarkable ribband-like 

 veils of mucus, each probably the product of a 



« Contrib. Canadian Biol. Fish., N. Ser., vol. 4, No. 12, 1929, p. 145. 



" Biol. Surv. Mount Desert Region, Pt. 2, Fishes, 1928, p. 3. 



» Taning, Rept. Danish Oceanogr. Expeds., 1908-1910, No. 7, vol. 2 

 (Biol.) A. 10, 1923, p. 25. 



•• Lat. 36°16' N„ long. 74°33' W., see Taning, Danish Oceanogr. Eipeds., 

 1908-1910, vol. 2 (Biol.), A 10, 1923, p. 25. 



" Murray and Hjort, Depths of the Ocean, 1912, p. 108. 



M For further discussion, see Bowman (Fishery Bd. Scotland Sci. Invest. 

 [1919], No. 2, 1920, p. 21) and Taning (Rept. Danish Oceanogr. Expeds., 

 1908-1910, vol. 2 (Biol). No. 7, A 10, 1923). 



*' It was at Newport that Agassiz, and Agassiz and Whitman, collected the 

 veils and the larvae on which they based their accounts. 



210941—53 35 



single ovary, up to 25-36 feet long, and said some- 

 times to be as much as 2 to 3 feet broad, in which 

 the eggs are arranged in a single layer, lying one to 

 three or even four in separate hexagonal compart- 

 ments, with the oil globule uppermost. In an 

 egg veil found near St. Andrews, New Brunswick, 

 between 32 and 36 feet long, about 8 inches wide, 

 about )i inch thick, and about 25 quarts (26 }i 

 liters) in volume, about 5 percent of the eggs were 

 single, about 80 percent were in pairs, and about 

 5 percent were in threes, per compartment. This 

 veil was estimated to contain about 1,320,000 

 eggs, 70 and Fulton estimated about the same num- 

 bers (1,345,848 and 1,317,587) in the ovaries of 

 two in Scottish waters. 71 



The veils are light violet gray or purplish brown, 

 made more or less blackish by the embryonic 

 pigment of the eggs according to the stage of de- 

 velopment attained by the latter. And they are 

 so conspicuous when floating at the surface that 

 fishermen have long been familiar with them, 

 though it was not until about 1871 that Alexander 

 Agassiz demonstrated their true parentage. 72 The 

 eggs occasionally become isolated, perhaps when a 

 storm shreds the mucous veil to pieces, and they 

 float like any ordinary buoyant fish eggs when this 

 happens. We have not actually found them in 

 this condition in the Gulf of Maine, but Agassiz 

 and Whitman saw isolated eggs at Newport, and 

 Taning has reported others from North Carolina 

 waters. 



The eggs themselves, large numbers of which 

 have now been examined, are 1.61 to 1.84 mm. in 

 longest diameter in the case of the American 

 species, as they lie in their mucous compart- 

 ments. 73 The yolk is straw-colored, and they have 

 either one copper-colored or pinkish oil globule 

 of 0.4 to 0.56 mm., or several smaller ones. Incu- 

 bation proceeds normally at temperatures from as 

 low as 41° to as high as 63°-64°, and probably in 

 higher temperatures. The larvae, which float 

 with the yolk uppermost at first, have been re- 



'• Berrill, Contrib. Canad. Biol, and Fish., N. Ser., vol. 4, No. 12, 1929, pp. 

 145, 147. 



n Sixteenth Annual Report, Fish. Bd. Scotland (1897) 1898, Pt. IU, pp. 

 125-134, pis. 2-3. 



» Baird, American Naturalist, vol. 5, 1871, pp. 785-786. 



13 The eggs of the European L. piscatorius are described as larger, averaging 

 about 2.3 mm. 



