FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



439 



Haddock are to be caught in the Gulf of Maine all the year round, and the 

 landings from the offshore grounds in general do not fluctuate more widely from 

 month to month than one would expect from bad weather, ill luck, market con- 

 ditions, etc.; but the catch inshore is greatest in spring, being augmented by the 

 gathering of the fish for spawning. The following are the landings of fresh haddock 

 at Boston and Gloucester, by months, for 1919, representing four-fifths of the 

 total catch for the Gulf: 



Month Pounds 



January G, 713, 778 



February 7,078,314 



March 5,561,370 



April 3,418,718 



May 4, 701, 026 



June 5,289,054 



Month Pounds 



July 6,088,984 



August 6, 307,368 



September 5,632,384 



October 6, 176, 150 



November 4, 187, 835 



December 4, 277, 640 



Breeding. — The rather level bottom on the eastern part of Georges Bank (fig. 

 217) is the most productive spawning ground for the haddock off the North Ameri- 

 can coast — one of the most productive anywhere for that matter. Our experience 

 on the Albatross in 1920, when we found haddock eggs in great abundance (p. 442) 

 in March and April (captures of ripe fish, male and female, in the trawl established 

 their identity as haddock, not cod) showed that the spawning fish are to be expected 

 anywhere in that general region over an area of at least 1,600 square miles. It is 

 not known whether haddock breed as plentifully on the deeper parts of the bank 

 to the west, but some gadoids (haddock, cod, or both) were spawning on the western 

 end late in February in 1920, proven by the presence of a few cod or haddock eggs 

 there. Browns Bank is likewise a productive nursery for haddock, for a fair pro- 

 portion of the many gadoid eggs towed there by the Albatross in April, 1920, were 

 far enough advanced in development to show their identity as such. 



Although the inshore spawning grounds of the Gulf of Maine haddock are the 

 annual goal of great numbers of breeding fish, they are neither so sharply circum- 

 scribed nor so regularly repaired to as those of the cod. Our own egg records, together 

 with reports from the hatcheries and from local fishermen, are enough to prove that 

 haddock spawn here and there all along the coastal belt from Cape Cod to the 

 entrance to the Bay of Fundy, the most important breeding grounds within this 

 zone being along the outer (eastern) and northern slopes of Stellwagen Bank, whence 

 many eggs are obtained for the Gloucester hatchery, and in the coastal belt between 

 Cape Ann and Cape Elizabeth, especially off Ipswich Bay, near the Isles of Shoals, 

 about Boon Island, and off Wood Island. It was on the Isles of Shoals-Wood 

 Island grounds that Welsh carried on his studies on the haddock during the 

 spring of 1913 (p. 432). Ripe haddock are caught on the shelving sandy bottom 

 along Cape Cod as far south as Nauset, and gill-netters sometimes get good fares 

 of ripe fish off Boston Harbor, but no great body spawns in the inner parts of Massa- 

 chusetts Bay, and few if any on the cod-spawning grounds off Plymouth (p. 425). 

 Breeding haddock are plentiful east of Cape Elizabeth in some years and scarce or 

 altogether absent in other seasons or over terms of years. For example, Captain 

 Hahn, superintendent of the Boothbay hatchery, writes that in April and May of 

 1912 spawning haddock in abundance came into Boothbay Harbor and into Line- 



