498 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



St. Mary Bay — and but few there — ^nor have dabs been recorded from other 

 parts of the west coast of Nova Scotia, though they are to be expected there. 

 Welsh's experience was that dabs are rather common on Georges Bank generally, 

 though no record was kept of the actual numbers caught, whUe the Allatross long 

 ago trawled them on both the northern and the southeastern faces of the bank, 

 and probably they also occur on Browns Bank though not yet definitely reported 

 from there. The record of this species is very meager east of Cape Sable. It 

 has been taken off Halifax, at Canso, on the Grand Banks, and at various localities 

 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but nothing seems to be known as to its local abundance. 



Turning to waters west of Cape Cod, dabs are plentiful all the year round on 

 Nantucket Shoals and Sound, where they are one of the important commercial 

 flounders, likewise in Vineyard Sound and Buzzards Bay in 7 fathoms and deeper, 

 and they are common offshore as far as New York,^" which is about the southern 

 limit to their regular occurrence. 



Habits. — ^Most of the dabs caught in the southwest part of the Gulf of Maine 

 are in 10 to 30 fathoms of water, and the fish caught on Georges Bank are in 20 to 

 50 fathoms. Occasionally one is reported from shoal water, but generally speak- 

 ing we believe about 5 to 7 fathoms may be set as its upper limit. Thus it lives 

 considerably deeper than the winter or the smooth- flounders. On the other hand, 

 we find no record of dabs as deep as 100 fathoms in the Gulf, and most of them 

 certainly live shoaler than 75 fathoms, while it is not likely that any descend into 

 the deep basins where the mud is so soft and sticky that few floimders of any kind 

 would be expected there. Most of the dabs that Welsh saw taken in gill nets on 

 the Isles of Shoals-Boon Island grounds were living on fine black sand between 

 the hard and rocky patches, and probably ahnost any sand or a mixture of sand 

 and mud bottoms is suitable for them, but rocks, stony ground, and very soft mud 

 are shunned by dabs as they are by other flounders. 



Food. — -The dab feeds chiefly on the smaller crustaceans such as amphipods, 

 shrimps, schizopods, etc., and likewise on the smaller shellfish, both univalves and 

 bivalves, and on worms. It is also known to eat small fish, but it is not likely 

 that it can catch these often. Its European relative also feeds on sea urchins, 

 starfish, and at times on algffi, and it is probable that the American dab would be 

 found equally omnivorous were stomachs of fish from various localities examined. 

 Fish in breeding condition usually are empty. The diet of the dab suggests that 

 it is one of the more sluggish flatfish, and there is no reason to suppose that it ever 

 travels about much after it once takes to the bottom except that it seems to move 

 inshore in winter off southern New England " and offshore and deeper again as 

 the water warms in spring, probably to avoid high temperature. If this actually 

 takes place, however, it never leads the dab up into the shallows, and no migration 

 of this sort has been observed north of Cape Cod. The rate of growth of the dab 

 has not been studied. 



Breeding habits. — Very little was known about the breeding of the American 

 dab imtil recently when its season was determined and its eggs were artificially 



" Nichols. Copeia, Deo. 27, 1913, No. 1, p. 4. " Tracy, 1910, p. 163. 



