FISHES OF THE GULi" OF MAINE 



41. Alewife (Pomolobus pseudoharengus Wilsonj 



107 



Gaspereau; Sawbelly; Kyak; Branch herring; Fresh-water herring; 



Grayback 

 Jordan and Evermann, 1S96-1900, p. 426. 



Description. — The lack of vomerine teeth distinguishes the alewife. with its 

 brethren, the hickory shad (p. 105) and blueback (p. 110), from the sea herring, but 

 even without the slight examination of the mouth which determination of this point 

 entails, it is distinguishable at a glance from it by the greater depth of its body, 

 which is three and one-third times as long as deep — an alewife of 13}^ inches being 

 about 4 inches deep while a herring has a depth of only 3 inches. Furthermore, the 

 alewife is much more heavily built forward than is the herring, and the serrations of 

 the midline of its belly are much stronger and sharper — hence the local name "saw- 

 belly" — so much so that a practiced hand can separate herring from alewivesin the 

 dark. The most useful distinction between the alewife and the blueback is the fact 



Fig. 44. — Alewife (Pomolobus pseaddhQ-engus) 



that the lining of the belly is pale in the former and black in the latter. Alewives 

 are distinguished from young shad by the projection of the tip of the lower jaw 

 beyond the upper when the mouth is closed, and by the fact that the outline of the 

 edge of the lower jaw is deeply concave in the alewife and nearly straight in the shad. 



Color. — -The alewife, like the herring, is dark green blue above, darkest on 

 the back, paler and silvery on sides and belly. Usually|there is a dusky spot on 

 either side just behind the margin of the gill cover (lacking in the herring) and in 

 large fish the upper side may be faintly striped with dark longitudinal lines. In 

 life the sides are iridescent with lines of green and violet. 



Size. — The alewife grows to a length of about 1 foot, adults averaging about 10 

 inches long and slightly more than half a pound in weight: 16,400,000 taken in New 

 England in 1898 weighing about 8,800,000 pounds. 



General range. — Nova Scotia and the Gulf of St. Lawrence south to the Carolinas, 

 running up into fresh water to spawn. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — When the white man crossed the Atlantic 

 probably there was no stream from Cape Sable to Cape Cod but saw its annual run 



