436 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHEHIES 



nearly all the species belonging to the fauna" of the particular ground on which 

 the fish in question were living. The larger Crustacea, such as hermit, spider, and 

 common crabs, shrimps, prawns, and amphipods, with gastropods and bivalve 

 mollusks in great variety, worms, starfish, sea urchins, sand dollars, brittle stars, 

 and sea cucumbers, all enter regularly into the dietary of the haddock, with probably 

 the commoner mollusks, crabs, small sea urchins, and brittle stars their chief sub- 

 sistence, according to locality. It has often been remarked (this Mr. Clapp cor- 

 roborates) that they must root out much of their food from the mud and sand of 

 the sea bottom, for they depend largely on burrowing bivalves and worms, which 

 they could obtain in no other way — for example, haddock caught near Eastport 

 contained eight varieties of annelids. They are also said to congregate about 

 clam beds. On the other hand none of the Eastport fish opened by Doctor Kendall 

 (1898) had risen to take the large pelagic shrimps (euphausiids) so abundant there 

 and which are the chief food of the local pollock, this being an illustration of how 

 close haddock hold to the bottom. 



Mr. Clapp listed no less than 68 species of mollusks, both bivalves and gastro- 

 pods, from 1,500 haddock caught on the northwest part of Georges Bank in 40 to 

 60 fathoms, and he has called our attention to the fact that haddock usually con- 

 tain smaller shells than do cod, and never the very large sea clams (Mactra) which 

 are so important a constituent of the diet of the latter. Furthermore, haddock eat 

 more worms than cod, and they are often packed full of worm tubes when caught on 

 bottoms covered with the latter — the " spaghetti bottom " of fishermen — such, for 

 example, as the locality known as " Cove Clark" on the northwest face of Georges 

 Bank (about lat. 41° 8' by long. 68° 40'). Haddock, like many other fish, take 

 squid when opportunity offers, and they are usually described as fish eaters like 

 cod. In Norwegian waters they are said to prey on schools of herring. Haddock 

 caught at Woods Hole have been seen full of them, and most American writers 

 credit their diet with herring, cunners, etc. We can only state in regard to this 

 that none of the shore fish examined by Welsh near Cape Ann in 1913, nor the 

 Georges Bank fish opened by Mr. Clapp (5,000 altogether), contained a fragment 

 of fish of any kind, nor have any of the fishermen of whom we have inquired (and 

 their practical experience is of course vastly wider than ours) described haddock as 

 feeding to any great extent on fish. Thus it is evident that while Gulf of Maine 

 haddock prey on small herring at times, fish is certainly an insignificant part of 

 their diet. Haddock have also been accused of feeding greedily on herring spawn — 

 perhaps without much justice. 



Judging from Welsh's experience with the fish breeding near Cape Ann 

 during April, 1913, haddock fast even more rigorously than cod at spawning time, 

 because more than 95 per cent of the hundreds of fish caught in the gill nets were 

 totally empty, and because fine trawls set near by were bringing in very few haddock 

 but were taking hake in fair numbers. In faot it was not until the introduction 

 of the gill-net and otter-trawl fisheries that any considerable toll was taken of the 

 haddock while spawning. 



Rate of growth. — The haddock shows its age on its scales almost as clearly as 

 does the herring. Miss Duff (1916, p. 95) gives the following lengths for Bay of 



