FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 77 



The old fish return to the sea after spawning, but as yet we have no idea how 

 many years in succession a given fish may spawn or to what age sturgeons live. 

 Apparently some of the young fish take to the sea at one year while others live for 

 two or three years in the rivers in which they are hatched ; for while sperlets of from 

 5 to 6 inches in length are found at the mouth of the Delaware River, as well as in the 

 Elbe on the other side of the Atlantic,"** and in the North Sea, young sturgeon as 

 long as 18 to 20 inches are taken in winter both in the Delaware and in the Merrimac 

 Rivers. Three marked fish in the Elbe were found to have grown as follows: 

 The first from 17 to 38 cm. from June 17 until the following April; the second from 

 43 H to 64 cm. from April 9 until the followdng December; and the third not at all 

 from November until the following February, suggesting that the sturgeon, like 

 many other fishes, makes most of its growth during the warm months. By the time 

 they have reached a length of 3 feet or so all sturgeons are either in the sea or 

 about the river mouths, and few of them become sexually mature until they grow to 

 about 4 feet or more in length. How long a period is covered by this growth is not 

 known, but immature fish of from 3 to 4 feet in length are common about Woods 

 Hole throughout the summer season, at the time w"hen the lai-ger ones are in the 

 rivers spawning. We have yet to learn how far oft'shore sturgeons stray. They 

 certainly descend to at least 25 fathoms, for they have been caught on cod and had- 

 dock lines at that depth in Scandinavian waters. 



The sturgeon is a bottom feeder, most abundant on sandy ground (such, at 

 least, being the case in the North Sea) , swimming slowly to and fro when at peace 

 but capable of darting ahead like an arrow on occasion, and frequently coming up to 

 the surface to jump clear of the water. Though so sluggish that it usually offers 

 no resistance when netted, large ones are very strong. An old North Sea proverb 

 has it that leaping sturgeons and dancing girls are both hard to hold ! 



The adult sturgeon is a mud grubber, rooting in the sand or mud with its snout 

 like a pig (the barbels serving as organs of touch) , as it noses up the worms and mol- 

 lusks on which it feeds and which it sucks into its toothless mouth with considerable 

 amounts of mud. It also consumes small fishes, particularly sand launce. Small 

 ones, while living about estuaries and river mouths, subsist on amphipod and isopod 

 Crustacea. Sturgeon, like salmon, eat little or nothing when running upriver to 

 spawn. 



THE EELS. FAMILIES ANGUILLID.ffi, SYNAPHOBRANCHIDiE, LEPTOCEPHALIDiE, 

 SIMENCHELYID.ffi, AND NEMICHTHYID.aE 



Eels have no ventral fins; scales are either absent or so small as to be hardly visi- 

 ble; their fins are soft without spines; the gill openings are very small; the vertebrae 

 extend in a straight line to the tip of the tail; and a single fin runs over the back and 

 forward on the belly with no separation into dorsal, caudal, and ventral portions. 

 There are several other fishes of eel-like form in the Gulf of Maine, viz, the hags and 

 lampreys, rock eel (Pholis), snake blenny (Lumpenus), wryniouth (Crypta- 

 canthodes), eel pout (Zoarces), and sand eel (Ammodytes), but the jawless, sucker- 



" Prince records a 6-inch sturgeon from Hudson Bay (Report or the sixty-seventh meeting or the British Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, held at Toronto in August, 1897, p. 687) . 



