FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 267 



south generally — they appeared in such numbers that odd specimens were taken 

 daily in the Small Point traps during the first half of July, just such a sporadic visit 

 as may be expected of a southern stray, and one so unusual that we have not heard 

 of a scup caught anywhere along the coast of Maine since then. 



The scup is strictly a summer fish in New England. Near Woods Hole they 

 appear about the first of May, and most of them depart about mid-October, though 

 some few linger through November and an occasional fish into December. Prob- 

 ably scup arrive somewhat later and depart earlier from Massachusetts Bay, but 

 data are lacking on this point. 



We have had very little first-hand experience with the scup. It is said that 

 the first fish to arrive in spring are the large adults, with the immature fish following 

 them later. During their summer stay they live in moderate depths. Large fish 

 are seldom caught in shallower water than 2 or 3 fathoms, or deeper than 15 to 20 

 fathoms. Occasionally, however, they have been known to school on the surface, 

 and young fry come close in to the land in but a few feet of water. At this season 

 the scup is purely a coastwise fish. A line drawn 4 or 5 miles out from the outer 

 headlands probably would inclose the entire stock. It is unknown on Georges Bank. 



Habits and food. — Scup usually congregate in schools and prefer smooth to rocky 

 bottom, which results in a distribution so local that one trap at Manchester took 

 small numbers of scup in 1885, 18S6, and 1887, while another close by did not yield 

 as much as one fish. Scup are bottom feeders in the main, seldom rising far above 

 the ground, the adults preying on crustaceans (particularly amphipods) as well as 

 on annelids, hydroids, sand-dollars, young squid, and in fact on whatever inverte- 

 brates the particular bottom over which they live affords. They also eat fish fry 

 to some extent, such free-floating forms as crustacean and molluscan larva?, ap- 

 pendicularians, and copepods. The young feed chiefly on the latter and on other 

 small Crustacea. Adult scup, like most other fish, cease feeding during spawning 

 time, for which reason few are caught then, but throughout the rest of the summer 

 they bite very greedily on clams, bits of crab, bloodworms (Nereis), etc., as do the 

 immature fish throughout their stay. Undoubtedly it is the autumnal chilling of 

 the coastal water that drives the scup away, for they are so sensitive to low tem- 

 peratures that they have been known to perish in great numbers — both large fish 

 and small — in sudden cold spells. While their winter home is unknown, it is more 

 likely that they simply move out to sea to pass the cold season on bottom in deep 

 water than that they journey far southward, the strongest evidence of this being 

 their nearly simultaneous appearance all along the southern coast of New England 

 in spring, and the fact that small scup, probably devoured while on their way off- 

 shore, have been found in autumn in cod stomachs on Nantucket Shoals, where 

 they are unknown in summer. This autumn migration probably leads the scup of 

 southern New England to the continental slope, and no doubt the few that summer 

 in Massachusetts Bay leave the Gulf of Maine altogether for the cold season, journey- 

 ing out past Cape Cod to the same goal, for since few are seen anywhere in spring 

 until the coastwise waters have warmed to about 50°, it is not likely they could 

 survive the considerably lower temperature (abop*, il° to 43°) of even the deepest 

 trough of the Gulf of Maine. 



