390 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHEEIES 



squid and occasionally on crabs and other crustaceans. Probably a complete diet 

 list would include the young of practically all the common Gulf of Maine fishes, 

 for Vinal Edwards recorded the following considerable list from the silver hake 

 taken at Woods Hole: Alewife, butterfish, cimner, herring, mackerel, menhaden, 

 launce, scup, silversides, smelt, and its own species, and probably the silver hake 

 that frequent Georges Bank feed chiefly on yoimg haddock. 



Though they do not school in definite bodies multitudes of these fish often 

 swim together, and such bands often drive herring ashore and themselves strand 

 in pursuit. Events of tliis sort are oftenest reported in early autumn when the 

 spent fish are feeding ravenously after the effort of spawning, but they may also 

 happen at any time during the summer. For example, Prof. A. E. Gross saw 

 the beach at Sandy Neck, Barnstable, Mass., literally covered with them on 

 several occasions in Jime and July, 1920.'''' Doctor Huntsman informs us that spent 

 fish frequently strand on the beaches on both sides of the Bay of Fundy in Sep- 

 tember. We once saw an army of silver hake harrying a school of sperling in but 

 a few inches of water on a shelving beach at Cohasset, Mass. — in fact, half filled 

 a canoe with pursuers and pursued with my bare hands — and from time to time 

 visitors to the seashore complain that the air is fouled with the stench of the rotting 

 carcasses. In fact we doubt if we have ever walked a couple of miles along the 

 beach about Massachusetts Bay at any time between June and October without 

 seeing at least one silver hake high and dry. 



It is said that European silver hake rest on the bottom by day and hunt by 

 night, and it is usually at night that the American fish run up into the shallows 

 and enter the traps, but strandings also take place by day. When they are on 

 bottom they keep to sandy or pebbly ground, seldom being caught on mud or 

 about rocks, in which, as in most of their ways, they correspond to the European 

 species. It has long been known that the latter fluctuates widely in abundance 

 from year to year throughout its range. Unfortunately fishery statistics throw 

 no light on this point for the American fish, wliich was looked on as nothing but a 

 nuisance until half a dozen years ago. Silver hake were reported relatively scarce 

 in the GuK of Maine during the few and brief periods when bluefish have abounded 

 there (p. 239) , nor is this unlikely, as the latter prey upon the former as silver hake 

 do on herring. 



Breeding Tiabits. — The silver hake is the most important summer spawner 

 among Gulf of Maine fishes, just as the haddock is for spring and the pollock for 

 autumn, and the Gulf is probably its most prolific nursery. It likewise spawns 

 over the outer part of the Nova Scotian Banks as far east as Sable Island, Dannevig" 

 having recorded large egg catches off Halifax. This is probably its eastern breed- 

 ing limit, however, for the Canadian Fisheries Expedition found no silver hake 

 eggs or iYj on Banquereau or Misaine Banks, in the Laurentian Channel, or on the 

 Newfoundland Banks. On the other hand our most westerly egg record was off 

 Nantucket Shoals (fig. 195), nor is it likely that silver hake spawn inshore far west 

 of Cape Cod, unless they do so much earlier in the season there than in the Gulf 



>» The Auk, Vol. XL, January, 1923, No. 1, p. 19. 



': Canadian Fisheries Expedition, 1914-15 (1919), p. 27. 



