MARINE ZOOLOGY 



773 



can then be drawn up. Many of the smaller animals will be in- 

 cluded in such samples. Other methods of collecting the animals 

 is by use of metal dredges, dredge nets, shrimp nets, cord mops 

 or tangles, dragnets along shore, townets, and fishing tackle gen- 

 erally. It is necessary to use a spade and seine in the beach sands 

 and some sharp instrument for scraping pilings and rocks. The 

 shore and the drift line offer many opportunities of collecting and 

 observing a wide range of animals with no special apparatus. 

 Studies of distribution and migration of marine animals have been 

 made by tagging large numbers of individuals and compiling rec- 

 ords of the return of these tags. 



Fig. 409. — -The common pompano, TracMnotus carolinus, a valuable food fish 

 which is taken abundantly along the southern part of our Atlantic Coast and in the 

 Gulf of Mexico. 



In an effort to give an idea of the typical animal life of the sea- 

 shore and shore waters, two tables of representative animals are 

 included. The first includes many of the marine and shore animals, 

 excluding vertebrates, of the Pacific coast, while the second pro- 

 vides a similar representative group including fish from the shores 

 and waters of the Texas portion of the Gulf of Mexico. The rocky 

 shores of our western coast furnish an abundance of life. To the 

 casual observer standing almost ajiywhere on the Texas beach, it 

 seems almost like a desert at the seashore. The shore fauna is rela- 

 tively sparse because the bare sand and shell fragments are almost 

 sterile of food. Closer observation, however, will reveal much more 

 life than at first thought, as will be indicated by the representative 

 lists which follow. 



