FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 401 



When a pollock only 9 inches long is capable of eating 77 herring up to 2J^ inches 

 in length at one meal, 67 "ravenous" is but mildly descriptive. However, pollock 

 so seldom strand in pursuit of prey that we have never seen one on the beach though 

 schools often come close in, witness the catches in the traps. 



According to European accounts the pollock of the eastern Atlantic feed 

 chiefly on fish, but in the Gulf of Maine they depend more on pelagic shrimps. 

 At Eastport, for example, where these (Meganyctiphanes and Thysanoessa) are very 

 abundant all summer, Kendall (1S98, p. 180) reports pollock of all sizes not only 

 fattening on them but so evidently preferring them to young herring that he did not 

 find a single "sardine" in a pollock stomach, though these were plentiful enough 

 at the time, and he remarks "if at any time the crustaceans disappeared from a 

 place the large pollock disappeared also." Similarly, Welsh found large pollock in 

 schools feeding on the surface on "shrimp" (Thysanoessa raschii) off the Isles of 

 Shoals and off Boon Island in April, 1913, remarking in his field notes for the 25th 

 that "in the last few days pollock have begun to appear in small schools of 400 

 to 500 fish with the appearance of large schools of feed (shrimp, 'all eyes'), the 

 feed (shrimp) breaking water trying to get away from the pollock which are after 

 them." He described the fish themselves as "rising and sinking at intervals; 

 when at the surface swimming like porpoises, leaping up and over with open 

 mouths, the feed being in dense streaks 6 inches to 1 foot down." These feeding 

 fish were "very sluggish and tame on this feed and easily taken in the purse 

 seines," while all were "stuffed to capacity" with shrimps, only an odd one con- 

 taining a herring. 



Even large pollock sometimes take morsels as small as copepods. Willey 

 (1921, p. 192), for example, speaks of a fish caught near Campobello Island which 

 contained proportionately as many large copepods (Euchseta) as euphausiid shrimps, 

 and likewise the smaller copepods, Calanus finmarchicus and C. hyperboreus, while 

 he found Sagittae and caprellids in the stomachs of other pollock. In north Euro- 

 pean waters, too, the medium-sized fish are known to eat considerable amounts of 

 small copepods, fish eggs, etc., and it is probable that the small fish diet chiefly 

 on these. Pollock also feed to a small extent on bottom-dwelling crustaceans on 

 both sides of the Atlantic, crabs, prawns, and bottom-dwelling shrimp having been 

 found in fish caught at Woods Hole and in the Gulf of Maine; but they never take 

 shelled mollusks so far as we are aware, though they bite clam bait as greedily as 

 fish baits, and fishermen speak of them as one of the few species that will bite (that 

 is, which feed) during the spawning period. 



Experiments on fish kept in captivity at Woods Hole 68 have shown that the 

 pollock is an excellent visualizer and captures its food by its keen sight more than by 

 scent. 



Rate of growth. — Owing to the brevity of its breeding season and to the readiness 

 with which its scales can be " read" European students 69 have found it easy to trace 



•' Smitt. Scandinavian Fishes, 1S92. 



•' Herrick. Bulletin, United States Fish Commission, Vol. XXII, 1902 (1904), p. 258. 



89 For resume* see Damas (Rapports et Proces Verbaux, Conseil Permanent International pour l'Exploration de la Mer, Vol. 

 X, No. 3, 1909, p. 167). 



