438 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



Shoals, leaving the coastal zone east of Cape Elizabeth and the whole deep basin as 

 barren of larval haddock (so far as our catches go) as it is of young cod, young 

 silver hake, young flatfish, and, in fact, of most other larval fishes except rosefish 

 (p. 309) and herring. This, with other lines of evidence, points to a drift around the 

 periphery of the Gulf from northeast to southwest, a subject to be discussed 

 elsewhere. 



It has long been known that the young fry of the haddock, like those of other 

 gadoids, often live commensal with the larger jellyfishes in European waters, and 

 Welsh's discovery of many small haddock of 30 to 77 mm. in company with 

 the common red jellyfish (Cyanea) on Georges Bank and off Nantucket Island, 

 July 23 and 25, 1916, with Willey and Huntsman's (1921, p. 2) notice of young 

 haddock about 2 inches long under Cyanea in the Bay of Fimdy, proves that they 

 follow the same habit in the Gulf of Maine. In fact it is in company with Cyanea 

 that young haddock in the late larval stage have most frequently been taken in 

 the eastern Atlantic, and the question whether this commensalism between young 

 fish and Medusa is as general off the American coast is worth attention, because it 

 is while drifting with these nurses that young gadoids carry out their longest 

 journeys. 



It is fair to assume that young haddock live pelagic for about as long 

 in American as in European waters — that is, for a period of three months or so 

 (we have no first-hand information) — before they seek the bottom. Nothing is 

 known about them in the Gulf of Maine from that time until they begin to be 

 caught by the otter trawlers as yearlings — 6 inches to a foot long. These little 

 fish — too small for market — are so plentiful on Georges Bank and in the South 

 Channel (where they form 35 to 40 per cent or more of the total catch of haddock 

 in point of numbers and more than one-fifth of the fish of all kinds) that hosts of 

 haddock fry must settle to bottom on these offshore banks generally. Probably 

 these young haddock are likewise plentiful on the inshore grounds, for yearlings are 

 reported by Huntsman in the Bay of Fundy, but they are seldom seen there, being 

 too small to be caught on line trawls or in gill nets. 



Adult haddock roam from place to place in search of food like cod, and so 

 constantly that where there is good fishing to-day there may be none to-morrow. 

 However, these movements seem mostly of short extent, from place to place 

 on a given bank as food is locally exhausted or for some other cause. How 

 much interchange of haddock there may be from bank to bank or between inshore 

 and offshore grounds is unknown, but the fish that inhabit the coastwise belt carry 

 out a local and irregular migration inshore in winter and early spring and offshore 

 again in June or July. Certain bodies of fish may linger all summer in the deeper 

 channels among the islands of Maine, on patches of suitable bottom. In 1923, 

 for instance, haddock were caught throughout July, August, and September between 

 Suttons and Bear Islands, near Mount Desert Island, as well as at other inshore 

 localities near by. The general opinion is that this fish is not such a wanderer as 

 the cod, and there is no positive evidence — such as finding fish with foreign hooks 

 in them — that any haddock visit the Gulf of Maine from far distant grounds (that 

 is, from the Scotian or Newfoundland Banks), or that any considerable immigration 

 takes place into the Gulf around Cape Sable. 



