370 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



Color. — Described as varying from blackish to 

 green in life, and as either as dark below as above, 

 or paling to bluish white on the belly, the latter 

 variously mottled with darker dots and bars. It is 

 said to change color to accord with its surroundings. 



Size. — Maximum length 12 to 14 inches and 

 about 1 % pounds in weight, but most of those seen 

 are smaller. 



Habits. — The barrelfish owes its common name 

 to its habit of congregating about floating spars 

 and planks or any drifting wreckage, or inside of 

 barrels or boxes, where it is easy to catch one in 

 a dip net. Off southern New England they are 

 often found under gulfweed, or under any other 

 raft of drifting seaweed or eel grass (Zostera) . And 

 they sometimes gather about slow-moving vessels. 

 Merriman 34 thinks its proper home is in the mid- 

 depths offshore, but this is a question for the future. 



It feeds on the sundry small crustaceans, bar- 

 nacles, hydroids, young squids, small mollusks, 

 and salpae, which it finds near or attached to its 

 floating homes; on ctenophores; likewise on fish 

 fry, the diet lists of specimens taken at Woods 

 Hole including herring, mackerel, menhaden, 

 launce, scup, and silversides. 36 Sometimes they 

 contain seaweed, but we suspect that this is eaten 

 for the animals attached to it, and not from a 

 vegetarian taste. 



Nothing is known of its breeding habits. 



General range. — Atlantic Coast of North Amer- 

 ica, Cape Hatteras to outer Nova Scotia; 39 most 

 plentiful south of Cape Cod. Probably it is 



oceanic, as Merriman 37 suggests, and more widely 

 distributed than the foregoing would suggest, for 

 one was found in a drifting packing case off 

 Penzance Harbor, Cornwall. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — The barrelfish 

 is caught in some numbers in the traps near 

 Woods Hole and to the westward, or is found 

 drifting under mats of seaweed. They were 

 unusually plentiful in Vineyard Sound, for exam- 

 ple, in 1920. 38 But it is so rare a fish within the 

 Gulf of Maine that we have never seen it there, 39 

 nor did Doctor Kendall find it on his various 

 collecting trips along the Maine coast. In fact, 

 the only published Gulf of Maine records for it 

 that we have been able to find are one from Bos- 

 ton Harbor; one from Salem; one from Annisquam; 

 one from Gloucester; 40 and one vaguely described 

 as brought in from the fishing banks off the coast 

 of Maine. We can now add one taken on the 

 northern edge of Georges Bank by the trawler 

 Squall on September 10, 1947. 41 



Black Ruff Centrolophus niger (Gmelin) 1789 



Jordan and Evermann, 1896-1900, p. 963. 



Description. — -The black ruff resembles the 

 pilot fish (p. 372) in its general body form more 

 than it does its closer relative the barrel fish 

 (p. 369), being moderately slender (a little more 

 than )i as deep as it is long to base of tail fin) , with 

 very blunt snout, strongly convex forehead, and 

 small mouth. But its body (about 2% times as 



31 Trans. Connecticut Acad. Arts. Sci., vol. 36, 1945, pp. 842-843. 



" Notes by Vinal Edwards. 



* According to Vladykov and McKenzie (Proc Nova Scotian Inst. Sci., 

 vol. 19, 1935, p. 87) occasional specimons are caught off outer Nova Scotia in 

 most summers. Recent records there are of one at Halifax, October 1924, 

 and of another there September 1927 (Vladykov, Proc. Nova Scotian Inst. 

 Sci., vol. 19, 1935, p. 6). 



« Trans. Connecticut Acad. Arts Sci., vol. 36, 1945, pp. 842-843. 



» Smith, Copeia, 1921, No. 91, pp. 9-10. 



■ Our own experience with this fish is limited to a single occasion, south of 

 Nantucket, when several were seen about a drifting box. 



<• Reported by MacCoy, Bull. 67, Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., 1933, p. 9. 



•i This specimen now in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and was 

 received through the kindness of J. Miggins of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife 

 Service. 



W* a ** to » ii *^^ 



Figure 196. — Black ruff (Centrolophus niger), Dennis, Mass. From Goode and Bean. Drawing by S. F. Denton. 



