FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 303 



within the limits of the Gulf. There are printed records of it in St. John Harbor 

 in the Bay of Fundy; near Seguin Island, off Small Point, and off Cape Elizabeth 

 (Maine), where it has been reported repeatedly; off Cape Ann; and from various 

 localities in Massachusetts Bay. Sunfish have even been seen in Boston Harbor, 

 and on August 18, 1918, one 4J^ feet long was killed in a narrow creek at Quincy, 

 Mass. The Grampus sighted sunfish near the Isles of Shoals in 1896 (Doctor 

 Kendall's field notes), in 1912, and in 1914, one in the eastern basin of the gulf in 

 1912, and seaside dwellers reported one or two near Cape Porpoise in 1921. In 

 short, as many fishermen have told us, sunfish may be expected anywhere in the 

 Gulf and even right up to the land, but so few visit the inner parts that to see one 

 is always something of an event. During July and August of 1912, for example, 

 the Grampus sighted only one, none at all in August, 1913, and only one in the 

 Gulf and another near La Have Bank during the mid and late summer of 1914. 

 Report has it, however (we can not verify this from first-hand observation), that 

 sunfish are more plentiful over and along the southern edge of Georges Bank, as 

 indeed might be expected from their oceanic origin. In the inner parts of the Gulf 

 it seems that sunfish are most often seen in midsummer and usually some distance 

 offshore. When sighted, these unlucky vagrants have usually been chilled into 

 partial insensibility, floating awash on the surface, feebly fanning with one or the 

 other fin, the personification of helplessness. Usually they pay no attention to the 

 approach of a dory, but we have seen one "come to life" with surprising suddenness 

 and sound swiftly, sculling with strong fin strokes, just before we came within har- 

 poon range. When one is struck it struggles and thrashes vigorously while the 

 tackle is being slung to hoist it aboard, suggesting that they are far more active in 

 their native haunts than their feeble movements in fatally cold surroundings 

 might suggest. 



Habits and food. — The sunfish lives on an unusual diet, for as a rule the con- 

 tents of the stomach consists either of jellyfish, ctenophores, or salpae, or of a slimy 

 liquid that probably represents their partially digested remains. This has been the 

 case with all the sunfish brought in to the Bureau of Fisheries at Woods Hole; but 

 various crustacean, molluscan,hydroid, and serpent-star remains, even bits of algas and 

 eelgrass (Zostera), have been found in sunfish stomachs in European waters, prov- 

 ing that at times it either feeds on the bottom in shoal water or among patches of 

 floating weed, and certainly its jaws seem fit for harder food than jellyfish. 



There is no reason to suppose that the sunfish ever breeds in the Gulf of 

 Maine, but Putnam (1870b, p. 255) records young ones about 2 inches long from 

 Massachusetts Bay. 61 Its spawning habits are not known, but presumably the eggs 

 are buoyant, with many oil globules, such being the case with the closely allied 

 species, Mola lanceolata. The young sunfish is spiny and very different in appear- 

 ance from the adult. 



Commercial importance. — This is a worthless fish, neither edible nor oily enough 

 to be worth trying out, even could enough of them be caught. 



« Schmidt (Meddelelser fra Kommissionen for Havunders^gelser, Serie, Fiskeri, Bind VI, 1921, No. 6, p. 11) believes these 

 were M. lanceolata, not M. mola. 



