FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 513 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — The distribution of this flounder in the Gulf 

 is governed by the fact that while it has occasionally been taken close inshore (for 

 example in weirs near Eastport 86 and in Passamaquoddy Bay) it is characteristically 

 a deep-water fish, hardly ever coming above 10 or 15 fathoms. Owing to the facts 

 that its mouth is so small that it can not take a cod or even a haddock hook and 

 that it almost never strays up into the shallows where cunner and flounder fishermen 

 might catch it, its very existence in the Gulf was unguessed by Massachusetts fisher- 

 men until 1877, when the United States Bureau of Fisheries caught numbers of 

 witches in a beam trawl in the deeper parts of Massachusetts Bay. Since that 

 time it has been definitely recorded from St. Mary Bay on the Scotian side of the 

 Gulf, in the Bay of Fundy and its tributaries (where Huntsman describes it as taken 

 very generally if not in any great numbers below 15 fathoms), at Eastport, off 

 Monhegan, off Seguin Island, off Cape Porpoise, near the Isles of Shoals (where 

 Welsh saw a few taken from the gill nets set in about 25 fathoms in April, 1913), 

 near Gloucester, at various localities in the deeper parts of Massachusetts Bay, 

 and from the western basin. We have trawled it on the Grampvs off Mon- 

 hegan, near Seguin, in Ipswich Bay, near Gloucester, and off the mouth of 

 Boston Harbor in depths ranging from 22 to 60 fathoms. It has been taken 

 in the Eastern Channel and on the slope to the southeast. It also occurs very 

 generally on Georges Bank, where Welsh saw many taken in the otter trawl, 

 and no doubt it inhabits Browns Bank also. This is enough to show that the witch 

 is to be expected anywhere in the Gulf in water deeper than 15 to 20 fathoms if the 

 bottom be suitable, which means locally all around the coastal belt and on the 

 smoother parts of all the deeper fishing grounds, but we have yet to learn how wide- 

 spread it is in the deep basin of the Gulf. But though its existence there is proven 

 and though it has been taken as deep as 858 fathoms 87 on the continental slope it is 

 probable that most of the local stock lives between 25 and 100 fathoms. Witches 

 are caught most abundantly on soft bottom such as fine muddy sand, clay, or even 

 mud. They are said to frequent hard reefs in Scandinavian waters, but this does not 

 seem to be the case in the Gulf of Maine, though they are common there on the 

 smooth ground between rocky patches. 



When adult the witch is as stationary as most other flounders, to be caught 

 the year round wherever it occurs, but its pelagic larvae are at the mercy of the cur- 

 rent for a long period (p. 515). 



In the Gulf of Maine the witch occurs in temperatures ranging from about 35° 

 or 38° (late winter and early spring) to 45° or 48° (late summer and early autumn), 

 according to precise locality and depth, and apparently it is never found in any 

 numbers in water warmer than 50°, but we hesitate to propose high temperature 

 as the factor barring it from shoal water because there is no evidence of its moving 

 inshore in winter when this would not operate. In the Gulf of St. Lawrence it occurs 

 in the icy cold (32°) water on the banks as well as in the slightly higher tempera- 

 tures (39° to 42°) of the deep channels. 88 



»« Reported by Gill (1873, p. 360) as O. acadianus. 



87 It was trawled down to 858 fathoms by the Albatross. Goode and Bean (1896) give a long list of deep-water localities for 

 the witch off southern New England. 



«* According to Huntsman 0918a, p. 631 



