FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



217 





Figure 101. — Larva (European) ,6.75 mm. After Schmidt. 



Figure 99. — Egg (European). After Mcintosh. 



Figure 102. — Larva (European), 12.5 mm. After Schmidt. 



Figure 100. — Larva (European), 5 days old, 4.3 mm. 



After Mcintosh. Figure 103. — Fry (European), 23 mm. After Schmidt. 



American Pollock (Pollachius virens). 



inches at 8% years, and about 30 inches at 9% 

 years. Fish of 3 feet and upward are therefore of 

 considerable age. The oldest recorded by Damas 

 among the thousands he examined was in its 

 nineteenth year. In European seas pollock grow 

 faster in the southern part of their range than 

 in the northern, but we have yet to learn whether 

 this applies to the American fish. 



The age at which Gulf of Maine pollock first 

 mature is not known, but this is probably at a 

 somewhat greater size than in Norwegian waters, 

 where most of them mature by the time they are 

 1% feet long; i. e., 3 years old. All of them that 

 are 2 feet long, or longer, in summer have spawned 

 at least once. 



Oeneral range. — Continental waters on both 

 sides of the North Atlantic in cool temperate and 

 boreal latitudes; regularly in the west from the 

 southeastern part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence 9 

 and northeastern Nova Scotia to New Jersey; 

 southward occasionally to Chesapeake Bay and 

 to Cape Lookout, 10 N. C, and northward in small 

 numbers to the southern part of the Grand Banks, 

 to the southeastern coast of Newfoundland, and 



to Sandwich Bay on the southeastern coast of 

 Atlantic Labrador; 11 West Greenland; Spitz- 

 bergen; Iceland; and the coasts of northwestern 

 Europe south to the North Sea, English Channel, 

 and Brittany coast of the Bay of Biscay in the 

 eastern Atlantic; occasionally to the Gulf of 

 Gascony (Arcachon). 



Occurrence in the Oulj of Maine. — In our side of 

 the Atlantic the pollock has its chief center of 

 abundance in the Gulf of Maine, where it is caught 

 in large numbers both on the offshore banks, and 

 all around the coast line, from Nantucket Shoals 

 and Cape Cod to Cape Sable. The only regional 

 exception is in the inner part of the Bay of Fundy 

 along the New Brunswick shore, where so few 

 pollock are taken that they do not appear at all in 

 the landings reported thence (Albert County) . 



The following statistics of the United States 

 catch for 1945, combined with the Canadian 

 catches for 1944 and 1946, 12 give a general idea of 

 the regional abundance of pollock, on a broad 

 scale, also of how universal they are, with the 

 one exception just noted. 



Browns Bank, about 965,000 pounds; western 

 coast of Nova Scotia to the Annapolis County 



1 Pollock appear not to be known anywhere farther within the Gulf or In its 

 northern side. 



10 Reported from Chesapeake Bay by Hildebrand and Schroeder (Bull. 

 V. S. Bur. Fish., vol. 43, pt. 1, 1928, p. 156) and from Cape Lookout by Coles 

 (Copeia, No 151, 1926, p [105]). 



» The pollock Is listed In the Reports of the Newfoundland Fisheries 

 Research Commission for 2 stations on the southern edge of the Grand Bank, 

 from Bay Bulls, Newfoundland, and from Sandwich Bay, Labrador. 



» We have not yet seen the Canadian statistics for 1945. 



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