290 BULLETIN OF THE BUEEAU OF FISHEEIES 



We have not been able to learn of a tautog taken anyu'here in the Gulf of 

 Maine between the first part of November and the last week in May,^" vdth very few 

 caught before July. It is a question whether this fish is as strictly resident in the 

 Gulf as it is farther south. Its nonmigrating habit elsewhere is a point in favor of 

 such a supposition, but the fact that successful breeding is yet to be demonstrated 

 for the Gulf of Maine, that no tautog less than 3 to 4 inches long has been 

 credibly reported north of Provincetown, that the fish appear later in the season 

 south than north of Cape Cod and by all reports increase in number as the autumn 

 draws on, and that no winter mortality of tautog has ever been reported in Massa- 

 chusetts Bay, are opposed to it. Perhaps a few tautog may be reared there, but 

 probably the local stock is more or less recruited every year by migrants from the 

 south, most of which withdraw again to the southward around the Cape in autumn. 



In the Gulf of Maine the tautog is found about steep rocky shores and off-lying 

 ledges, or over bowlder-strewn bottoms — seldom in other situations, except that 

 stragglers are sometimes caught about the piers in harbors (of which there is record 

 at Provincetown and Boston), and that the traps pick up a few, as we have just 

 remarked. Breakwaters are favorite haunts, as is the "rip rap" of the recently 

 constructed Cape Cod Canal. South of Cape Cod they are not so strictly confined 

 to rocky bottom and small ones are often seined on sandy beaches, but we have not 

 heard of this happening in Massachusetts Bay. Tautog are strictly coastwise fish. 

 Not only are they unknown on the offshore ledges and banks but it is unusual for 

 one to be caught more than a mile or so from land in the Gulf of Mame, though 

 they are not so closely confined to the coast line farther south. On the other hand 

 it is exceptional for them to run up into brackish water, though an odd tautog has 

 been taken in the tidal part of a stream mouth in Casco Bay; and in the Gulf of 

 Maine they are so closely restricted to the zone from just below tide mark (with 

 the big tides there they are often above low-water mark at high tide), to 3 or 4 

 fathoms depth, that they are never caught on long lines set for cod or haddock. 



Food. — Tautog feed on invertebrates, chiefly on shellfish (both univalves and 

 bivalves), especially mussels and clams, and on barnacles that they pick off the 

 rocks and which are the chief diet of the fishes living about ledges. Hermit crabs 

 are favorite morsels. They also eat sand dollars, scallops, amphipods, shrimps, 

 isopods, crabs, and lobsters, swallowing the smaller whole, but cracking the larger 

 with the crushing teeth (p. 286). A tautog of about 2 pounds caught off Cohasset, 

 Mass., September 3, 1922, had made a meal of Gammarid amphipods ("sand 

 fleas"), though cunners caught at the same time and place were fuU of barnacles. 



Breeding habits. — About Woods Hole the tautog spawn chiefly in June, and the 

 season for such of them as breed north of Cape Cod is probably the early summer. 

 The eggs are buoyant, lacking oil like those of the cunner, but slightly larger 

 (0.9 to 1 mm. in diameter). At a temperature of 68° to 72° incubation occupies 

 42 to 45 hours and probably 10 to 12 hours longer in the cooler water of Massachu- 

 setts Bay. The larvae " are about 2.2 mm. long at hatching. When 4 days old 



50 The earliest date we have found is May 24. 



" Kuntz and Radclifle (1918, p. 92) describe its eggs, larvce, and fry. 



