282 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



General range. — Atlantic coast of North America 

 from the coast line out to the offshore fishing banks ; 

 common from the Strait of Belle Isle, 67 the north 

 shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence where it has 

 been characterized as "all along the coast," 68 and 

 southern and southeastern Newfoundland to Ches- 

 apeake Bay; recorded from the southern part of the 

 Grand Banks, 69 and as far north as Ungava Bay, 

 northern Labrador; 70 and from as far south as 

 North Carolina and Georgia. 71 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — This is the 

 commonest shoal water flounder, and perhaps the 

 most familiar of all the ground fishes of the Gulf 

 of Maine. There is no bay or harbor from Cape 

 Cod to Cape Sable, no inter-island passage, and no 

 stretch of open coast where it is not to be caught, 

 unless the bottom be too smooth and hard, except, 

 perhaps in the very turbid waters at the head of 

 the Bay of Fundy. 



As one looks down at low tide from some pier 

 where the water is clear enough, or from a boat, 

 drifting over the flats, one is almost sure to see a 

 flounder here and there, lying partly buried in the 

 sand or mud. And they often come into water so 

 shallow that it is easy to spear them. A flounder 

 spear used to be almost as familiar an instrument 

 along our coasts as an eel spear. 



With most of the flounder population of the in- 

 ner parts of the Gulf living shoaler than 30 fathoms 

 (20 fathoms is the deepest we have caught one 

 there, close in to Little Duck Island, off Mount 

 Desert), the zone occupied by them around the 

 coast north of the elbow of Cape Cod is hardly as 

 much as 8 to 10 miles wide, measured from the 

 outer headlands or islands, except for Stellwagen 

 Bank which lies a few miles farther out, and off 

 Cape Sable, where their outer-depth limit lies 

 something like 15 miles offshore. But their range 

 extends out along the offshore rim of the Gulf, in 

 somewhat deeper water, to include the Nantucket 

 Shoals region as a whole (they must be plentiful 



" Jeflers (Contrlb. Canadian Biol., N. ser., vol. 7, No. 16, ser. A, General, 

 No. 13, 1932, p. 210) reports It as not uncommon at Raleigh, on the New 

 foundland side of the Strait. 



« Stearns, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mas., vol. 6, 1883, p. 125. 



" At 2 stations, see Kept. Newfoundland Fish. Res. Lab., vol. 2, No. 3, 

 1938, p. 79. 



10 Reported from Fort Chlmo, Labrador by Kendall (Proc. Portland Soc. 

 Nat. Hist., vol. 2, Pt. 8, 1909, pp. 225, 233); specimen in U. S. Nat. Museum, 

 collected in 1882 or 1883 by L. M. Turner and identified by T. H. Bean. 



" Reported from Beaufort, N. C. (by Yarrow, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., Phila- 

 delphia, vol. 29, 1877, p. 205); from the Neuse River, near New Bem, N. C. 

 (by Smith, North Carolina Oeol. and Econ. Surv., vol. 2, 1907, p. 390); and 

 from Georgia (by Hlldebrand and Schroeder, Bull. V. S. Bur. Fish., vol. 

 43, Pt. 1, 1928, p. 170). 



to account for the 2 to 4 million pounds of black- 

 backs and lemon soles that are brought in from 

 there yearly) and from the shoaler parts of 

 Georges Bank. 



The flounders on Georges run so much larger 

 than they ordinarily do in-shore that they have 

 been described as a separate species (p. 277) . Dur- 

 ing the summer of 1913 these soles (as they are 

 called now, if they weigh more than 3 pounds) con- 

 stituted about 4 percent by number of all the fish 

 of all kinds that were caught on Georges by the 

 several otter trawlers that carried investigators 

 from the Bureau of Fisheries. Nowadays most 

 every otter trawling trip brings in anywhere from 

 a few hundred to several thousand of them accord- 

 ing to depth and precise location on the bank. 

 About 4 million pounds of lemon soles (larger than 

 3 pounds) and blackbacks (smaller than 3 pounds) 

 were brought in from Georges Bank as a, whole 

 in 1947. 



They seem not to be so plentiful on Browns 

 Bank, to judge from a catch of about 23,00f> 

 pounds of large sole and smaller blackbacks there 

 by United States vessels in that same year. But 

 much larger numbers are landed in the fishing 

 ports along the outer coasts of Nova Scotia; about 

 420,000 pounds of flounders and soles combined, 

 in 1946, the most recent year for which we have 

 seen the Canadian Fisheries statistics. 



Fluctuations in abundance. — Declining catches 

 in the fyke nets that were used to take brood fish 

 for the Booth Bay (Maine) hatchery leave no doubt 

 that winter flounders were decidedly less abundant 

 in that vicinity from 1934 to 1940 than they had 

 been from 1925 to 1933. And some decrease in 

 their abundance during the same period is indi- 

 cated for the southern Cape Cod shore by the 

 catch records of the Woods Hole hatchery; also 

 along Connecticut and near New York, by the 

 evidence of fishermen's logbooks. 72 



Importance. — The winter flounder, whether 

 blackbacks or lemon soles, is the thickest and 

 meatiest of all the flatfishes smaller than the 

 halibut that are common on our coasts eastward 

 and northward from the elbow of Cape Cod. 



In 1946 (most recent year when statistics are 

 available for the Canadian catch as well as for the 

 United States catch), the inner parts of the Gulf, 

 from the tip of Cape Cod around to Cape Sable, 



'• For details, see Perlmutter, Bull. Bingham Oceanogr. Coll., vol. 11, Art. 

 2, 1947, pp. 6-13, who has made a special study of the black back. 



