426 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



Island, but few breeding fish have been found there of late, probably because this 

 particular locality has been selected as the dumping ground for the refuse from 

 Boston. 



The Ipswich Bay region, where large schools of ripe cod gather in winter and 

 spring, as Earll (1880) described long ago, is probably the most important center 

 of production in the inner part of the Gulf of Maine north of Cape Ann, but this, 

 like the Massachusetts Bay spawning ground, is limited to a rather small and well 

 defined area of bottom extending only from a few miles south of the Isles of 

 Shoals to abreast of the mouth of the Merrimac River and (less productively) to 

 Cape Ann, chiefly within 4 to 6 miles of land. 



Spawning cod are seen only in comparatively small numbers and at scattered 

 localities in the coastal zone north and east of the Isles of Shoals, the most productive 

 of these minor spawning grounds being near Cape Elizabeth, off Casco Bay, off the 

 Sheepscott River, off Boothbay, and in the neighborhood of Mount Desert Island. 

 Very few ripe cod are reported along the Maine coast farther east, and although cod 

 eggs have been taken in the Bay of Fundy the larvae are unknown there. The 

 egg-collecting campaigns of the several hatcheries have been so extensive and have 

 been prosecuted over so many years that we can confidently assert that there are no 

 centers of production anywhere within the Gulf east of Cape Elizabeth comparable 

 to the Georges Bank, Nantucket Shoals, Ipswich Bay, or Massachusetts Bay 

 spawning grounds. It may prove that the west coast of Nova Scotia is equally 

 prolific, but no definite evidence that cod breed there in any abundance has yet been 

 obtained. We should also point out that the small ledges in the western part of the 

 Gulf — -e. g., Jeffreys and Platts — are not breeding centers though they are important 

 feeding grounds. We can not speak for Grand Manan Bank or German Bank. 

 Thus cod are quite as local in their choice of spawning grounds in the Gulf of Maine 

 as they are in Norwegian waters. 94 



A glance at the chart (fig. 212) will show how limited the more important 

 breeding grounds of the southwestern part of the Gulf of Maine are in extent (not 

 more than 300 square miles in all) compared to the whole peripheral zone of this 

 part of the Gulf within the 50-fathom curve, and so definitely limited are they that 

 ripe fish are seldom found even close by, though the fishing for green or spent 

 fish may be good there. For instance very few spawning cod are ever taken either 

 on Jeffreys Ledge off Cape Ann, or on Stellwagen Bank at the mouth of Massa- 

 chusetts Bay, though both these shoals yield good fares of fish at times. As a 

 consequence of the limited area of the Gulf of Maine spawning grounds cod congre- 

 gated on them in such numbers during the spring of 1879 — when fishing was less 

 intensive than at present and perhaps the schools correspondingly more plentiful — 

 that more than 11,000,000 pounds of cod, mostly spawning fish, were taken on the 

 Ipswich Bay ground alone by local fishermen. 



Cod evidently spawn as far south and west as New Jersey, for a portion of the 

 fish caught off Atlantic City in late autumn and early winter are described by local 

 fishermen as ripe, 96 but no information is available as to precise spawning grounds 



»' See Hjort (Rapports et Proces-Verbaux, ConsSil Permanent International pour l'Eiploration Je la mer, Vol. XX, 1914) . 

 » Smith, 1902, p. 208. 



