104 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



near Woods Hole in summer have also contained Euthemisto (Rathbun, 1896), and 

 Rathbun (1889) found mackerel feeding largely on amphipods off Virginia and 

 Maryland in the spring. European mackerel also feed on Euthemisto, and, generally 

 speaking, the latter are no doubt more important as a source of fish food over the 

 outer part of the shelf and along the continental edge (where they are constantly 

 abundant) than in the inner part of the Gulf of Maine; but no evidence is at hand 

 that any Gulf of Maine fishes depend on them to the extent to which the long-finned 

 albacore (Germo alalunga) does off the French coast (Le Danois, 1921). 



Whenever and wherever the larvae of decapods are plentiful, all plankton- 

 eating fishes feed on them greedily. In the Gulf of Maine the "megalops" stages 

 of crabs are of considerable economic importance in this respect. Linton (1901 and 

 1901a), for example, found many young herring at Woods Hole full of them, and 

 Doctor Kendall in his field notes records some of the fish in certain schools of Georges 

 Bank mackerel as packed with them, almost to the exclusion of other plankton. 

 Larval shrimps, prawns, and lobsters also enter regularly into the dietary of many 

 fishes in European seas, notably the various clupeoids. In Swedish waters the 

 young stages of bottom-dwelling shrimps are regularly consumed by mackerel 

 (Nilsson, 1914); no doubt also in the Gulf of Maine, though definite information so 

 far available on this point is scanty. Adult decapods hardly enter into the plankton 

 of the Gulf of Maine, except for the large deep-water prawn Pasiphsea, which may 

 be expected to prove a staple food for hake (genus Urophycis) . 



Sagittae are eaten in considerable quantity by mackerel. Rathbun (1889), for 

 example, found them in fish taken in the southern fishery off the Middle Atlantic 

 States, and Doctor Kendall, in his notes, records some of the mackerel taken on the 

 northern part of Georges Bank during the last week of August, 1896, as full of them. 

 Sagittse probably will be found to enter largely into the dietary of the mackerel in 

 Massachusetts Bay in early summer; in fact, whenever they are plentiful (p. 18). 

 They are also eaten by herring in Scottish waters (Brook and Calderwood, 1886), 

 and probably this will also prove to be the case to greater or less extent in the Gulf of 

 Maine. In the Adriatic Sagittse are also the chief dependence of the young goosefish 

 (Lophius piscatorius) while it lives pelagic (Stiasny, 1911), which probably applies 

 equally to the Gulf of Maine goosefish (Bigelow and Welsh, 1925, p. 526). The 

 American pollock also consumes Sagittae in the Gulf of Maine (Willey, 1921). 



The shell-bearing pteropods, represented locally by Limacina retroversa, are 

 seldom plentiful enough in the Gulf of Maine to be of much importance as a possible 

 food supply for the schooling fishes there, but when these mollusks do swarm mackerel 

 would no doubt feast on them, for they are an important food for this fish off the west 

 coast of Ireland (Massy, 1909). According to Rathbun (1889), mackerel eat L. 

 retroversa off the Middle Atlantic States, and mackerel taken off No Mans Land (an 

 islet near Marthas Vineyard) have been recorded as full of them. In Norwegian 

 waters, according to Nordgaard (1907), this pteropod also enters into the dietary of 

 the herring, but as Limacina seems not to have been recorded as herring food else- 

 where in north European seas it probably does not so serve to any great extent in the 

 Gulf of Maine. Lebour's (1920) observation that young fish of various species not 

 only had not eaten Limacina, although the latter were plentiful in the tow, but 



