424 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



flounder as to any gadoid (p. 429), we have occasionally found older ones identifiable 

 as either cod or haddock by the black pigment, and probably as the former. The 

 localities and dates in question are near Mount Desert Island, July 19 (station 

 10302), near Wooden Ball Island at the mouth of Penobscot Bay, August 6, and 

 near Cape Elizabeth, September 20 (station 10319). Such summer breeding, how- 

 ever, is merely a sporadic occurrence comparable to the so-called " after-spa^vTiing " 

 of cod observed off the north coast of Iceland by Schmidt " and in the North Sea 

 and the Baltic. °^ 



It is not so exceptional for cod to breed in summer off the outer coast of Nova 

 Scotia where ripe fish are reported by local fishermen in June and July, a report 

 which Captain Hahn informs us he can corroborate from personal experience. 

 Similarly, spawning cod were caught from the deck of the Gramjm^ (Capt. E. E. 

 Hahn in command) on Bradelle Bank in the Gulf of St. Lawrence late in August 

 many years ago, while gadoid eggs (probably cod) were towed at various localities 

 there during June, July, and August of 1915 by the Canadian Fisheries Expedi- 

 tion," and on the Grand Banks, where practically Arctic temperatures prevail dur- 

 ing the spring, cod spawn chiefly if not altogether in summer. 



Spawning grounds. — The spawning grounds of the Gulf of Maine cod may be 

 classified as offshore and inshore, the former compi-ising Georges Bank and Nan- 

 tucket Shoals (probably also Browns Bank, though we have no actual record of 

 spawning cod there), and the latter the various smaller grounds near the coast 

 between Cape Cod and Nova Scotia. According to the reports of fishermen and 

 to W. F. Clapp's first-hand experience, large schools of cod spawn on the eastern 

 part of Georges Bank east of the shoals, centering at about latitude 41° 21' to 

 41° 30^, longitude 66° 50' to 67° in about 35 fathoms of water, though by all accounts 

 their stay is short, this particular body of cod spawning out and scattering by the 

 1st of March. It is a striking commentary on our ignorance of the life histories of 

 even our commonest fishes that no data better than vague rumors are at hand 

 as to where and when cod spawn on other parts of Georges Bank, or even whether 

 they do so at all. In all probability, however, they spawn there wherever the 

 water is shoaler than 30 fathoms. 



The broken bottom east and south of Nantucket Island, known as Nantucket 

 Shoals (fig. 212), has long been knoviTi as a center of abundance for ripe codfish in 

 late autumn and early winter (p. 422), and it is here that most of the brood fish have 

 been collected for the Woods Hole hatchery. Cod with sexual organs in an ad- 

 vanced stage of development appear first on the more easterly of these small banks 

 from late October on, working westward as the season advances. But according 

 to local fishermen they abandon the shoaler (7 to 10 fathoms) portions of these 

 grounds after the water is chilled by the first heavy snoM's, to congregate from 

 January until April in the two deeper (12 to 20 fathoms) channels close in to Nan- 

 tucket Island, as is represented on the accompanying chart (fig. 212). 



" Rapports et Proc6s-Verbaux, Cons6il Permanent International pour TExploration de la Mer, Vol. X, 1909, p. 21, 123. 

 " Ehrenbaum (Nordisches Plankton, Band I, 1905-1909, p. 226) and Fulton (Consfil Permanent pour I'Exploratipn de la 

 Mer, Publication de Circonstance, No. 8, 1904). 



" Dannevig. Canadian Fisheries Expedition, 1914-15 (1919), p. 22. 



