460 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



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Figure 239. — Lumpfish (Cycloplerus lumpus), Eastport, Maine. From Goode. Drawing by H. L. Todd. 



based and square tipped or slightly convex; the 

 pectorals are large, rounded, and so broad based 

 that they nearly meet on the throat, and they are 

 larger on males than on females. The ventral 

 fins are not visible as such, being altered into 6 

 pairs of fleshy knobs, surrounded by a roughly 

 circular flap of skin. The entire disk, so formed, 

 (sucking disk) is about as wide as the width of the 

 head, and is situated close behind the throat. 



Color. — Descriptions of this fish credit it with 

 a great variety of tints, which we can corroborate. 

 On adults the ground tint may be bluish gray, 

 olive, brownish or yellow green, chocolate or kelp 

 brown, or slaty blue, the belly usually being of a 

 paler or more yellowish cast of the same hue, but 

 sometimes whitish. On some specimens the back 

 and sides are marked with dark blotches and more 

 or less dotted with black. Others, however, are 

 plain colored or nearly so, except that the tubercles 

 are usually dark tipped. Young lumpfish (and it 

 is with such that we are most familiar) often 

 match their surroundings very closely in color, 

 usually being mottled olive green and ochre yellow 

 with silvery dots and stripings. Males, when 

 mature, are more vividly colored than females, 

 and their bellies turn red (brightest near the 

 sucking disk) during the breeding season. 



Size. — The longest lumpfish so far recorded 

 from the American coast measured 23 inches, and 

 weighed 13K pounds; the heaviest weighed 20 

 pounds but measured only 21^ inches (both from 



Orient, N. Y.), and the proportion of weight to 

 length varies similarly in smaller fish. Few are 

 longer than 14 to 16 inches, or heavier than 3 to 6 

 pounds while the largest we ourselves have seen 

 was about 15 inches long. 29 Females average 

 larger than males. Fulton, for example, 30 writes 

 that 39 females taken in the Bay of Nigg (Scot- 

 land) averaged about 16 inches and 6 pounds, 30 

 males only 11 inches and a little less than 2 pounds. 

 Habits. — Although the lumpfish is ungainly, it 

 can swim more rapidly for a short distance by 

 vigorous tail strokes than its shape might suggest, 

 and its young pelagic fry are very active. The 

 adult lump is primarily a bottom fish, but is also 

 made semipelagic by its habit of hiding in floating 

 masses of rockweed. In European seas it ranges 

 from tide mark down to 150-200 fathoms, but 

 we have never heard of one taken in more than 

 a few fathoms in the Gulf of Maine. Perhaps it 

 is the nature of the bottom that restricts them 

 there for the soft sticky mud that floors the deeper 

 basins, at least in the western side, 31 can hardly 

 be a favorable environment for them. Large 

 lumpfish are often found hiding among rockweed 

 or holding fast by the sucker to stones or other 



26 Smitt (Scandinavian Fishes, vol. 1, 1892, p. 294) gives 24 inches as'the 

 maximum for Scandinavian and European waters generally, apparently'not 

 accepting the enormous size (to 48 inches) credited to it by Mobiusjand 

 Heincke (Vierter Bericht, Komm. wiss. Untersucb. deutschen Meere, Kiel, 

 18S3, p. 226). 



» Twenty-fourth Ann. Report, Fisheries Board Scotland, (1905) 1906, Ft. 

 3, p. 171. 



« The eastern trough of the Gulf has a harder bottom. 



