336 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



Color. — Descriptions of this fish credit it with a great variety of tints and 

 this we can corroborate. When adult the ground tint may be bluish gray, olive, 

 brownish or yellow green, chocolate or kelp brown, or slaty blue, with the belly 

 usually a paler or more yellowish cast of the same hue but sometimes whitish. 

 During the breeding season the belly of the adult male turns red, brightest near the 

 sucking disk. In some specimens the back and sides are marked with dark blotches 

 and more or less dotted with black. Others, however, are plain colored or nearly 

 so, except that the tubercles are usually dark tipped. Young lumpfish (and it is 

 with such that we are omselves most famiUar) often match their surroundings 

 very closely in color, usually being mottled olive green and ochre yellow with 

 white belly when living among floating masses of rockweed, and sometimes with 

 silvery dots and stripings. 



Size. — On the American coast a length of 20 inches and weight of 18^ pounds 

 (a fish examined by Storer) seems to be the maximum, and few are larger than 

 14 to 16 inches long or heavier than 3 to 6 pounds. The largest we ourselves have 

 seen was about 15 laches long.°^ Females average larger than males. Fidton,'* 

 for example, WTites that 39 females taken in the Bay of Nigg (Scotland) averaged 

 about 16 inches and 6 pounds, and 30 males only 11 inches and slightly less than 

 2 pounds. 



General rangre.— Both sides of the North Atlantic, northward to Disko (lat. 

 70° N.) in West Greenland, Davis Straits, Hudson Bay, Labrador, Newfoundlaud, 

 and the GuK of St. Lawrence, and south to New Jersey (exceptionally to Chesa- 

 peake Bay) on the western side. 



Occurrence in the Gvlf of Maine. — The lumpfish is to be found aU around the 

 shores of the Gulf of Maine. It has been reported at Yarmouth and St. Mary 

 Bay on the Nova Scotian side, and is abundant in all stages at various localities 

 in the Bay of Fundy. There are many records for it along the Maine coast — e. g., 

 Eastport, Penobscot Bay, off Seguin, and Casco Bay; it is common near Boothbaj', 

 and in Massachusetts waters where it has been reported repeatedly, as at Nahant, 

 Swampscott, Plymouth, Truro, along Cape Cod, and at Monomoy. It even enters 

 river mouths, but so far. as we can learn never where the water is appreciably 

 brackish. According to fishermen large liunps are seldom seen on the offshore 

 banks, but we towed newlj' hatched larvae (only 6 to 10 mm. long) on the northeast 

 part of Georges Bank on July 23, 1914. 



Habits. — The adult lump is primarily a bottom fish but is also made semi- 

 pelagic by its habit of hiding in floating masses of rockweed. In European seas it 

 covers a very wide depth range — from tide mark down to 150 to 200 fathoms, but 

 we have never heard of one taken in more than a few fathoms in the GuK of Maine. 

 It is probably restricted to a comparatively shoal zone there by the nature of 

 the bottom, if not by the absolute depth, for the soft sticky mud of the deeper basin 

 can hardly be a favorable environment. Large lumpfish are usually found hiding 

 in rockweed or holding fast by the sucker to stones or other objects. About Massa- 



" Smitt (Scandinavian Fishes, 1892) gives 24 inches as the maximum for Scandinavian and European waters generally, ap- 

 parently not accepting the enormous size (up to 48 inches) credited to it by Mobius and Heincke (Vierter Bericht, Kommission 

 zur wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung der deutschen Meere in Kiel, 1883, p. 226). 



" Twenty-fourth Annual Report, Fisheries Board for Scotland, 1905 (1906), Part III, p. 171. Glasgow. 



