FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 487 



Migrations. — While the young plaice is living at the surface (p. 491) it undergoes 

 the same involuntary journeyings that overtake other fish fry spawned at the same 

 place and time, but from the time it seeks bottom it is one of the most stationary 

 of fishes. It has been said to work inshore more or less in winter, though not on 

 very definite evidence, and it may congregate on certain grounds for spawning, 

 though this is yet to be proven, but it is certain that wherever plaice are plentiful 

 they are to be caught at any season. Huntsman (1918, p. 18), who has paid special 

 attention to this fish, believes that it "remains pretty much in the same place from 

 season to season and year to year. Perhaps in the course of years it may shift a 

 few miles." 



Breeding habits. — The plaice is a spring spawner. Our earliest record of its 

 eggs in the Gulf of Maine was for March 4 (in 1920), when they occurred in some 

 numbers off Casco Bay. We also found eggs on Browns Bank on the 13th, and 

 Welsh records large female plaice, half spent and with eggs exuding, and males 

 with running milt, near Cape Ann on the 14th of March in 1913; but since other 

 fish of both sexes taken with them were still unripe it is probable that spawning is 

 not general until the last of that month or the first days of April. Plaice eggs 

 have appeared regularly in our tows at the shallower stations in April (twice in great 

 numbers, namely, off Seguin Island on the 10th and off Mount Desert Island on the 

 12th in 1920), and spawning continues unabated throughout May, for in 1915 eggs 

 occurred at practically all our May stations. Our latest record was for a single 

 egg on the 14th of June in 1915, and April and May similarly cover the height of 

 the spawning season in the Bay of Fundy according to Huntsman (1918, p. 14). 



The plaice breeds later in the northern part of its range than in the southern 

 part. On the banks off Cape Breton and in the southern part of the Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence it spawns chiefly during May and June, and on the Newfoundland Banks 

 it continues to do so until the end of July, when a few eggs were found by the Cana- 

 dian Fisheries Expedition. Huntsman also remarks that there is a difference in 

 the breeding season according to the depth of water, those living shoalest com- 

 mencing to spawn first as the vernal warming of the water makes itself felt from 

 above, but we have no clear evidence on this point to offer for the Gulf of Maine. 

 This fish spawns somewhat earlier in the North Sea than in American waters — 

 that is, from mid-January till May with the climax in March and April. 



Our egg records and Huntsman's observations show that the plaice spawns 

 all around the Gulf of Maine from Cape Cod on the west to Cape Sable on the 

 east, including the Bay of Fundy, and from close inshore out to the 50-fathom 

 contour. It likewise spawns on Browns Bank (p. 487), and, while we found no eggs 

 on Georges Bank either in February, March, April, or May of 1920, the fish is so 

 common there and so stationary in its general habit that it is likely that we simply 

 missed its eggs there, either by a failure to tow over the precise spawning beds or 

 by timing our visits between waves of reproduction. Plaice also spawn abundantly 

 east and north of Cape Sable, particularly off Cape Breton, on Sable Island Bank, 

 and in the shoaler parts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 59 



>' Dannevig. Canadian Fisheries Expedition, 1914-15 (1919), p. 18, figs. 11, 12, and 13. 

 102274—25} 32 



