518 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — This flounder is comparatively rare in the 

 Gulf of Maine. Dr. W. C. Kendall found it at Monomoy, Storer found it at Prov- 

 incetown, where he saw a considerable number in shoal water, and it is reported 

 from North Truro, Gloucester Harbor, where a considerable number were collected 

 in 1878 (Welsh found it not uncommon there in 1916), and at Milk Island near by, 

 but we can not learn that it is taken in numbers anywhere in the Massachusetts 

 Bay region. I have never seen it at Cohasset nor are local fishermen sufficiently 

 familiar with it to throw any light on the subject. It has never been recorded 

 between Cape Ann and Casco Bay, nor did Welsh see it taken there by the gill- 

 netters during the spring of 1913; and while it has been reported repeatedly and at 

 several localities in Casco Bay, which seems to be a local center of abundance, it can 

 not be common along the eastern Maine coast or on the New Brunswick side of the 

 Bay of Fundy, the only records from this stretch of coast line being from Bucksport, 

 Eastport, and Passamaquoddy Bay, where one was taken in 1880 and another in 

 1912. Minas Channel on the Scotian side is evidently a center of abundance like 

 Casco Bay, for Leim found it common there. 90 Huntsman also reports it in St. 

 Mary Bay, though we have found no other record of it along the western coast 

 of Nova Scotia. In June, 1912, Welsh saw this flounder taken in the otter trawls 

 on Georges Bank, beyond which nothing is known of it on the offshore fishing 

 grounds. The sand flounder is much more plentiful west of Cape Cod than it is 

 anywhere in the Gulf of Maine, and it is common everywhere on sand bottoms in 

 the Woods Hole region. 



The sand flounder is a shoal-water fish, living from close below tide mark down 

 to 30 or 40 fathoms, at which depth Welsh saw it taken on Georges Bank, but 17 91 

 to 20 fathoms probably marks its lower limit in the coastal zone north of Cape Cod. 

 It is caught chiefly on sand bottom off southern New England and southward, as 

 its name implies, but its comparative abundance in Casco Bay and in Minas Channel 

 shows that it also frequents softer and muddier ground in the Gulf of Maine. This 

 species is a year-round resident off the southern New England coast, which probably 

 applies to it in the Gulf of Maine also. 



Food. — The large mouth suggests that this species, like the su mm er flounder, 

 is largely a fish eater, and hake, herring, launce, and silversides have been found in 

 the stomachs of sand flounders caught at Woods Hole. It likewise feeds as indis- 

 criminately on small invertebrates as does the winter flounder, Vinal Edwards 

 having noted annelid worms, shrimps, crabs, squid, mollusks, ascidians, and even 

 seaweed in sand-flounder stomachs, while Welsh remarks in his field notes that 

 fish caught off Atlantic City, N. J., were full of schizopod shrimps and of them alone. 



Rate of growth. — It seems that the sand flounder passes through its larval 

 stage more rapidly than do most flatfish, for many fry with the migration of the 

 eye completed have been taken at Woods Hole only one to two months after spawn- 

 ing commences there. One kept in an aquarium there by Williams 92 grew from 

 10 mm. to 22 mm. in length in 11 days, and in Rhode Island waters, according to 



m i 



80 Huntsman, 1922a, p. 70. 



01 It is common down to this depth near Woods Hole. 



« Bulletin, Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College, Vol. XL, 1902-3, p. 3. 



