350 BULLETIN OF THE BUKEAU OF FISHERIES 



able feature of the fish. The soft dorsal (32 to 41 rays) and anal (31 to 38 rays) 

 fins both originate about the mid length of the body and extend nearly to the base 

 of the caudal. Both taper, too, from front to rear, but the latter is more falcate 

 than the former. The caudal fin is slightly cmarginate in old fish but in young 

 ones its central rays are the longest. The ventrals are pointed like the pectorals, 

 below which they stand, and their inner rays are attached to the skin of the abdomen 

 for only a short distance. The broad-based pectorals are set so high on the sides 

 that their upper margins are close below the overlapping edge of the sucking disk. 



Color. — The general ground tint is slaty or dark brownish gray, with the belly 

 as dark as the back. Each side is marked by a broad darker brown or sooty stripe 

 with white edges, running from the angle of the jaw to the base of the caudal fin 

 but interrupted by the eye and by the pectoral, and broadest close behind the 

 latter. The caudal fin is velvety black with white corners, a character noticeable 

 enough to have given rise to a vernacular name. The dorsal and anal fins are 

 dark slate color or black, more or less margined with white. The pectorals and 

 ventrals are black, either plain or more or less pale edged. 



Size. — About two feet long. 



General range. — Cosmopolitan in warm seas, north to Massachusetts Bay on 

 the Atlantic coast of North America. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — So far as we can learn no shark sucker has 

 been reported from the Gulf for many years; in fact, the only positive records of 

 it north of Cape Cod are for one taken from the bottom of a fishing boat in Boston 

 Bay some time prior to 1839 (described and Ulustrated by Storer, 1853-1867, p. 210, 

 pi. 32, fig. 3), a second reported by Wheatland (1852) from Salem Harbor (reidenti- 

 fied by Goode and Bean as naucrateoides) , and a third reported by Goode and Bean 

 (1879, p. 20, as naucrateoides) as taken at the mouth of the Merrimac River in June, 

 1870. It is only as the rarest of strays that it ever wanders north of Cape Cod, 

 clinging to some ship (for such is a common habit in its tropical home) or to a shark. 



134. Swordfish sucker (Remora brachyptera Lowe) 

 Jordan and Evermann, 1896-1920, p. 2272. 



Description. — This is a stouter fish than the shark sucker (p. 349), being only 

 about seven times as long as deep (counting caudal fin) and about as thick through 

 the shoulders as deep, with a thicker caudal peduncle; and although the sucking 

 disk is as long, relatively, there are only 14 or 15 plates. Furthermore the pectoral 

 fins are relatively shorter than those of the shark sucker, softer, and rounded instead 

 of pointed, while because of the deeper body the upper margins of these fins are not 

 so close to the edge of the sucking disk. The ventrals, too, are attached to the skin 

 of the abdomen along their inner margins for at least one-half their length, as noted 

 above (p. 349). Its long dorsal fin (29 to 32 rays) and the small number of plates 

 in the sucking disk serve to separate it from the remora (p. 351). 



Color. — Described as light reddish brown above and darker below with paler 

 dorsal and anal fins. A diagnostic feature is that it lacks the side stripes and white 

 fin edgings so characteristic of the shark sucker. 



