important food. Polychaetes become increasingly 

 important in the diet of older winter flounder, thus 

 indicating a strong association with the bottom. 



Overall, the analysis of the stomach contents 

 reported on here indicates that relatively few prey 

 species make up a large portion of the food of 

 juvenile fish. Before groundfish begin to depend on 

 the benthos as a food source, calanoid copepods and 

 euphausiids (mostly Meganyctiphanes norvegica) 

 are extremely important foods. The diet of most 

 species of larger juvenile fish, which depend 

 primarily on benthic animals as food, includes 

 gammarid amphipods such as Unciola sp. and 

 Byblis serrata, along with the caprellid amphipod 

 Aeginina longicornis . Decapods found in the diet 

 were represented by Crangon septemspinosa more 

 than any other species. The only other prey 

 which stands out as important in the diet of the 

 juvenile fish reported on here was the mysid 

 Neomysis americana. 



Acknowledgme nts 



I thank Roland Wigley and Richard Langton for 

 their guidance in the preparation of the manu- 

 script. I am also indebted to the many members of 

 the staff at the Northeast Fisheries Center who 

 helped to collect the fish and especially to J. 

 Towns, D. Couture, and J. Murray who assisted in 

 the stomach content analyses. 



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Ray E. BOWMAN 



Northeast Fisheries Center Woods Hole Laboratory 

 National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA 

 Woods Hole, MA 02543 



I 



