tide induced. Figure 1 shows reproductions of Gulf 

 Stream surface features taken from National 

 Environmental Satellite Service charts analyzed 

 by the Miami Satellite Services Station for two 

 weekly periods in April and May 1977. The warm 

 season is judged to be roughly the time during 

 which surviving juvenile or adult crabs might 

 be carried into the Carolinian Province by 

 such eddies, hence accounting for the tropical 

 Callinectes spp. collected in 1977. During late 

 April to mid- June of this period, prominent spin- 

 off eddies were developed along the coast (least 

 evident at the surface when summer gradients are 

 minimal). There is nothing to suggest that spin- 

 offs during summer 1977 were unusual, but they 

 appear to have been more prominent than such 

 features indicated by surface isotherms in 1976 

 (Deaver 1979). These currents augment inshore 

 and southerly drift indicated by drift-bottle 

 returns in shelf waters along the Carolinas in 

 May-June (indeterminate in July), August and 

 September (Bumpus 1973; Barans and Roumillat 

 1978), and seabed drifter returns during the same 

 period (Bumpus 1973). A mechanism to aid shore- 

 ward movement of tropical crabs seems to be 

 present. 



There is no record of unusual southerly storms 

 during spring-summer of 1977 (Anonymous 

 1977a, b). 



Are juvenile or adult Callinectes spp. ever found 

 at sea? Admittedly, there is little evidence at 

 hand. Most records of distribution for members of 

 the genus are nearshore or estuarine, but Franks 

 et al. (1972) recorded both C. sapidus and 

 C. similis in trawl samples taken at depths 

 of 9-90 m off Mississippi and on 29 May 1968 ob- 

 served hundreds of nocturnally swimming small 

 C. similis (40 mm carapace width) at the surface 

 in 9 m water in an apparent inshore migration. 

 Callinectes sapidus has been observed to move 90 

 mi (144.8 km) in 10 d in Chesapeake Bay (R. E. 

 Miller^). Gunter (1950) reported mature female 

 C. danae {— similis) at the surface several miles 

 from the Texas shore in the Gulf of Mexico. All 

 species of Callinectes have broad salinity toler- 

 ances. Although Norse (1978) regarded C hocourti 

 as occurring mainly in low salinities, he ordered 

 C danae, C. marginatus, and C. ornatus at the 

 high end of the salinity tolerance scale for the 



genus, indicating ability to exist in full seawater. 

 Data on geographic ranges of species result from 

 the amount of field work expended in finding 

 them, coupled with study and identification. The 

 marine species list for the Carolinas has expanded 

 greatly in this century with the growth of labora- 

 tories in the area. So-called rare occurrences may 

 result from simple lack of collecting, but in this 

 case we feel that rarity is genuine because of the 

 intense sampling effort expended in the area 

 during the time considered. The South Carolina 

 Marine Resources Center maintained an inten- 

 sive estuarine benthic survey along the state's 

 coast for 2 yr, 1973-74 (Bishop and Shealy 1977; 

 Mathews and Shealy 1978); F. J. Schwartz^ main- 

 tained an intensive gill net and trawl survey of the 

 lower Cape Fear River, N.C., and adjacent waters 

 in all seasons of the year from 1973 to 1978, 

 consisting of 10,646 units of effort (6,828 20-min 

 river trawls, 3,818 24-h river gill net sets, 1,531 

 30-min ocean trawls). The above crab records, 

 with one exception, come from the latter effort or 

 from personnel associated with the former, and 

 are the only such occurrences recorded during this 

 period. 



Acknowledgments 



Some records of capture were obtained from J. 

 Tyler, North Carolina Department of Natural 

 Resources and Community Development, Divi- 

 sion of Marine Fisheries, and C. A. Johnson III and 

 T. Handsel, North Carolina Marine Resources 

 Center, Bogue Banks; other collectors are men- 

 tioned in Table 1. The South Carolina record was 

 communicated by Elizabeth L. Wenner, South 

 Carolina Marine Resources Research Institute, 

 Charleston. We thank Stephen R. Baig, NCAA 

 National Environmental Satellite Service, Miami 

 Satellite Field Service Station, for charted Gulf 

 Stream data and other information, and Andrew 

 J. Kemmerer, Atlantic Environmental Group, 

 NMFS, NOAA, for other environmental informa- 

 tion. T E. Bowman, B. B. Collette, M. C. Ingham, 

 and N. A. Smith, as well as anonymous readers, 

 critically reviewed the manuscript, and Maria 

 Dieguez prepared the figure. J. J. Kohlmeyer, 

 University of North Carolina Institute of Marine 

 Sciences gave the reference to tropical drift. 



^R. E. Miller, Horn Point Environmental Laboratories, Uni- 

 versity of Maryland, Cambridge, MD 21613, pers. commun. 

 October 1979. 



^F. J. Schwartz, University of North Carolina Institute of 

 Marine Sciences, Morehead City, NO 28557, pers. commun. 

 August 1979. 



196 



