PLANKTON OF THE GULF OF MAINE 135 



mer, for this shrimp was plentifully represented in that region on March 22 (station 

 20081) in hauls from 40 and from 200 meters, while the haul from 100 meters 

 yielded about 50 on April 12 (station 20100), although the zooplankton as a whole 

 was decidedly scanty on that occasion. I hesitate to extend this generalization 

 to the winter, however, because only a few euphausiids were taken there on January 

 5, 1921 (station 10502). 



Euphausiids n are often extremely plentiful near the surface in the Eastport-St. 

 Andrews region at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy, where the smaller-sized herring 

 can be seen chasing them to and fro right up to the docks (p. 102), and they are so 

 conspicuous when schooling that they must have been seen and commented upon 

 by local fishermen from the first settlement of that coast. The earliest published 

 reference to their local abundance there, or in any part of the gulf, for that matter, seems 

 to have been in 1S79, when S.I. Smith (1879, p. 90) described Meganyctiphanes norvegica 

 as occurring at the surface in the Eastport region in "swarms, filling the water for 

 miles," and as "usually accompanied by schools of mackerel, young pollock, and 

 other fish, and in autumn by immense flocks of gulls, the fish and smaller gulls appear- 

 ing to feed almost exclusively on Thysanopoda at such times." Such occasions he 

 recorded for April, August, September, and October, adding that Verrill found these 

 shrimp swarming in myriads in the ripplings in the center of the Bay of Fundy in 

 1869, and that they are often so abundant among the wharves at Eastport that they 

 may be caught there by the quart. Moore also wrote (1898, p. 401) that "during 

 the summer and fall dense bodies of Thysanopoda are seen swimming about the 

 wharves at Eastport and at other places in the vicinity, and they are also extremely 

 abundant on the ripplings at Grand Manan, which has long been famous as a herring 

 fishery. Excepting the eyes and the phosphorescent spots beneath, which are 

 bright red, the bodies of these shrimps are almost transparent, yet such is the 

 density of the schools in which they congregate that a distinct reddish tinge is often 

 imparted to the water. In the summer and early fall of 1895 they were especially 

 abundant about the wharves at Eastport, and on one occasion, at least, they were 

 left at low water several inches deep over a considerable area of one of the docks." 

 Moore believed that Thysanoessa inermis was the species chiefly concerned, but 

 in the light of subsequent observations it is probable that then, as now, it was 

 outnumbered there by Meganyctiphanes. Our own observations, with information 

 communicated by Doctor Huntsman, show that the passage of time has seen no 

 diminution in the abundance of the latter in the Eastport-St. Andrews region in 

 summer and early autumn. 



It is only in the extreme northeast corner of the gulf, perhaps east of Machias, 

 that euphausiids appear regularly in estuarine situations; farther west and south 

 the group, as a whole, are creatures of the open sea. 



Thysanoessa inermis (Kr0yer) n 



Thysanoessa inermis, as I have stated elsewhere (Bigelow, 1917, p. 283), occurs 

 more regularly over the gulf as a whole than any other euphausiid, though it is not 

 the most abundant locally. In July and August, as exemplified by the summers of 



" Chiefly Meganyctiphanes, but Thysanoessa as well, according to Smith (1879), Moore (1898), and our own observations. 

 '' I follow Hansen (1911) in including under this name both Th. neglecta and Rhoda inermis, which, as he has shown, are 

 merely varieties of the one species. 



