FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



209 



to bottom until they are large enough to figure in 

 the commercial catches, and (c) those of the larger 

 fish. 



It may be assumed that the pelagic life of the 

 haddock lasts about as long in American waters 

 as in European; i. e., for three months or so (we 

 have no first-hand information) before the fry 

 seek the bottom. Meantime the eggs and larvae, 

 like those of many other fishes may drift for con- 

 siderable distances from where they were spawned. 

 And these involuntary drifts may be greatly ex- 

 tended by a habit that the very young haddock 

 have (like those of other gadoids) of living under 

 the bells of the larger kinds of jellyfishes. Welsh, 

 for instance found many small haddock of 2% to 

 3 inches (60 to 77 mm.) in company with the 

 common red jellyfish (Cyanea) on Georges Bank 

 and off Nantucket Island, in late July of 1916, 

 while Willey and Huntsman 74 found young 

 haddock about 2 inches long under Cyanea in the 

 Bay of Fundy. In fact, it is in company with 

 Cyanea that young haddock in the late larval 

 stage have been taken most often in the other side 

 of the Atlantic. 



Our few records for the pelagic larvae in the 

 inner parts of the Gulf all have been in the south- 

 western part. Thus the coastal zone east of Cape 

 Elizabeth, and the whole deep basin of the Gulf, 

 seems to be as barren of larval haddock (so far 

 as our catches go) as of larval cod, of larval silver 

 hake, of larval flatfishes, and, in fact, of most 

 other larval fishes except rosefish (p. 433) and 

 herring. It appears from Walford's studies that 

 in normal years, as represented by 1931, the 

 haddock population of Georges Bank is recruited 

 by a good supply of larvae hatched from eggs 

 that have been spawned on the bank itself. But 

 a large proportion of the Georges Bank eggs and 

 larvae drift off the bank in other years, as in 

 1932, either to the westward and southward 

 past Nantucket Shoals, where their mortality is 

 too great for them to support a population of any 

 importance, or southward out over the continental 

 slope, to even more certain destruction, " with 

 results disastrous to the ensuing brood of young 

 fry (p. 212). 



It is during their pelagic stage (whether drift- 

 ing independently or with Medusae) that inter- 



'< Canadian Field Natural, vol. 35, 1921, p. 2. 



'•For further details we refer the reader to Walford's very interesting 

 study (Bull. U. S. Bur. Fish., vol. 49, Bull. No. 29, 1938). 



mingling is the most likely to take place in signifi- 

 cant amount between the New England and the 

 Nova Scotian populations of haddock. All that 

 is known in this respect is that Georges Bank 

 seems not to have received any important re- 

 cruitment from elsewhere, either in 1931 or in 

 1932. 



In any case, hosts of young fry settle on the 

 bottom on the offshore banks generally. Thus 

 we have repeatedly found 10 or more little haddock 

 3 or 4 inches long, in the stomachs of pollock 

 caught on Georges, while we have trawled numbers 

 of equally small ones there as well as on the other 

 offshore grounds. And 1- to 2- year -old fish, 

 6 to 12 inches long (too small to market) sometimes 

 make up as much as 35 to 40 percent of the total 

 catch of haddock on Georges as well as in the 

 South Channel, while many more of them doubt- 

 less escape through the meshes of the trawls. 

 On the other hand, very young haddock are 

 seldom seen inshore for they are too small to be 

 caught either on long lines or in gill nets. But 

 it is probable that they are plentiful there, also, 

 for yearlings are reported in the Bay of Fundy, 

 by Huntsman. 



Nothing is known about the movements of the 

 young haddock during the first year or two 

 after they take to the bottom. But our fisher- 

 men have long realized that the larger haddock, 

 like the larger cod, are so constantly on the move 

 in search of food that the fishing may be poor 

 tomorrow where it was good today, or vice versa. 

 And analysis of the catches that we made on 

 Nantucket Shoals during the tagging campaigns 

 of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries, 1923-1931, 

 shows that considerable changes took place in 

 the abundance of fish within periods of a few 

 days or weeks at the spots fished, also with 

 occasional brief periods of unusual abundance 

 that are most reasonably interpreted as reflecting 

 the passage of large bodies of fish from else- 

 where. 78 



The extensive tagging experiments that we 

 have made within the Gulf of Maine on vessels of 

 the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries, 77 and that have 

 been made in Nova Scotian waters 78 by the 

 Biological Board of Canada have now proved 



» For details, see Schroeder, Jour. Marine Research, vol. 5, No. 1, 1942, 

 p. 9, table 2. 

 " Schroeder, Jour. Marine Research, vol. 5, No. 1, 1942. 

 » Needier, Contrib. Canadian Biol, and Fish., vol. 6, No. 10, 1930. 



