FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 407 



back only slightly heyond the middle of the first dorsal in the tomcod while it 

 reaches nearly to the extremity of that fin in the cod. Unfortunately the number 

 of fin rays varies so widely in both these fish that it is not diagnostic, there being 

 from 11 to 15 in the first dorsal, 15 to 19 in the second, 16 to 21 in the third dorsal 

 of the tomcod, 12 to 21 in its first anal and 16 to 20 in its second. In a large 

 fish of about 12 inches we found the number to be 11, 18, and 20 dorsal rays and 

 21 and 19 anal rays. Most of the recent accounts give the location of the vent 

 as the chief external distinction between tomcod and cod, describing it as in front 

 of the origin of the second dorsal in the former and back of it in the latter. We 

 must caution the reader, however, that it is only for adults of the two species 

 (which no one could confuse in any case, cod being so very much the larger) that 

 this distinction holds, for cod as small as tomcod (that is, up to a foot long) 

 often have the vent well in front of the second dorsal, while on the other hand it 

 may hardly be further forward in adult tomcod in breeding condition. 



Color. — Tomcod are not as variable in color as cod. All we have seen (a con- 

 siderable number) have been olive or muddy green above, with a yellowish tinge, 

 darkest on the back, paling on the sides, and mottled with indefinite dark spots or 

 blotches. The lower sides usually show a decided yellowish cast in large fish. The 

 belly is grayish or yellowish white, the dorsal and caudal fins of the same color as the 

 back, the anals pale at the base but olive at the margin, and all the fins more or less 

 dark mottled. The tomcod has often been described (following Storer) as thickly 

 speckled with black dots, but we have never seen one so marked. 



Size. — The maximum length is about 14 inches and few are more than 9 to 12 

 inches long. 



General range.— '^orih American coastal waters from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to 

 Virginia, running up into fresh water. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — The tomcod is locally common around the 

 entire coast line of the Gulf. For example, it has been recorded from Pubnico '" and 

 St. Mary Bay on the west coast of Nova Scotia, from various localities on both 

 shores of the Bay of Fundy (e. g., Annapolis Basin and River, Minas Basin, 

 St. John Harbor, and the St. Andrews region), from Eastport and almost every 

 river mouth along the Maine coast. It is very common in the vicinity of Booth- 

 bay Harbor, has been recorded from sundry stations in Casco Bay, and from 

 Portland Harbor in Maine, and is to be found in practically every estuary 

 around Massachusetts Bay. It is so strictly a shore fish that probably none wander 

 outside the outer headlands nor descend more than a few fathoms below low tide 

 mark in the Gulf, but chiefly inhabit the mouths of streams and the estuaries into 

 which they empty, as well as shoal muddy harbors like Duxbury Bay. As often as 

 not they are in brackish water and in Avinter they run up into fresh water. Tomcod 

 are less plentiful in harbors where there is no stream drainage, but now and then 

 they are caught off opea shores — off Nahant, for instance — and such fish are usually 

 large. South of Cape Cod these little fish move out from the shore into slightly 

 deeper (hence cooler) water in spring, coining in again in autumn to winter in the 

 estuaries ; but they do not carry out a bathic migration of this sort in the cooler Gulf 



•« Huntsman, 1922a, p. 68. 



