FISHES FROM THE 



SOUTHERN CARIBBEAN 



COLLECTED BY VELERO III IN 1939 



By David K. Caldwell and Melba C. Caldwell 



INTRODUCTION 



Information on the distribution of marine shore fishes in the 

 southern Caribbean is sketchy at best. Schultz (1949) and Weibezahn 

 (1955) reported on shore fishes from the eastern area, from Venezuela, 

 and from the west Meek and Hildebrand (1923-28) made even more 

 detailed studies in their monumental work on the marine fishes of 

 Panama. Limited faunal works {e.g., Fowler, 1953) have dealt with 

 restricted areas between. 



In April, 1939, the Allan Hancock Foundation research vessel 

 VELERO III, under the direction of Captain Hancock, made a short 

 cruise to the mainland Caribbean coasts of Panama, Colombia and 

 Venezuela and to several of the major islands which lie just to the north. 

 Garth (1945) gave an account of the cruise and included the exact 

 localities of the collecting stations, as well as charts and other pertinent 

 information. Reference should be made to that report for details of the 

 activities at each station and for the limited ecological data available. A 

 few specimens were not collected at regular stations. The localities and 

 any other pertinent data for this material are indicated in the appropriate 

 place in our Annotated List of Specimens. 



We emphasize that this report is intended only to be a list of the 

 fishes collected during that cruise and primarily is presented to announce 

 the existence of the material for the benefit of interested specialists and 

 to provide materials for broad zoogeographic studies by others. It should 

 be noted that times on station often were brief, that collecting methods 

 were limited, and that all collections were made during the one month 

 of April and therefore there is no seasonal influence. 



While we attempted to make determinations as definitive as possible, 

 and have commented appropriately within the text, in many cases we 

 have failed to make specific, or even generic, identifications. This failure 

 usually was due in various degrees to ( 1 ) the small size, poor condition 

 and/or lack of needed series, (2) the need for a specialist to make 

 definitive studies of available material in a group (this effort was beyond 



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