FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



475 



torn are often very deep sepia. In some situa- 

 tions they may be dull olive green mingled with 

 blue, brown, or rust color. Some cunners are 

 slaty, but reddish or rust tones are apt to prevail 

 when they are living among red seaweeds about 

 rocks. Cunners caught in deep water are often 

 almost as red as the rosefish; on the other hand 

 we have seen very pale ones, more or less speckled 

 all over with blackish dots, over sandy bottom. 

 The belly is invariably of a bluish cast, more or 

 less vivid, sometimes whitish, sometimes dusky, 

 sometimes little paler than the sides. Some cun- 

 ners have the lips and lining of the mouth bright 

 yellow. Young fry are more or less dark-barred 

 and blotched. 



Size. — In the Gulf of Maine adult cunners 

 measure about 6 to 10 inches in length and weigh 

 less than half a pound, and one a foot long is very 

 large. But a few are caught up to 15 inches long, 

 and as heavy as 2% pounds. 



Habits. — The cunner is chiefly a coastwise fish. 

 In our northern waters they are the most plenti- 

 ful from just below tide mark downward. They 

 swarm among eel grass (Zostera) and about the 

 piling of wharves and under floats in harbors. 

 They also run up into the deeper salt creeks, small 

 fish farther than larger ones, though we have 

 never heard of one in water that is appreciably 

 brackish; and young cunners are often found 

 among eel grass and in rock pools. Southward, 

 however, from New York or thereabouts, most of 

 them keep to water at least 15 to 20 feet deep, 

 hence somewhat farther out, depending on the 

 topography of the coast line and of the bottom. 



At the other extreme, they are common enough 

 at 10 to 15 fathoms in the inner parts of Massa- 

 chusetts Bay, and not rare as deep as 25 to 35 

 fathoms on the offshore ledges and banks, and 

 we have taken them as deep as 70 fathoms on 

 Georges Bank. But the great majority live 

 within 5 or 6 miles of the shore. And while there 

 are some on the offshore grounds, such as Stell- 

 wagen Bank, Jeffreys and Cashes Ledges, and even 

 on Georges and Browns Banks where the otter 

 trawls frequently pick up a few, we have never 

 heard of a large catch of them made far out at 

 sea, whether along southern New England or to 

 the northward. Most of the cunners that are 

 caught the deepest and the farthest offshore are 

 large ones that have probably strayed thither, 

 and finding good feeding, have remained. 



As far as wc know adult cunners never depart 

 far from the bottom, or from the rocks about 

 which they make their homes, nor do they school. 

 Many, it is true, may live together, but they act 

 quite independently of one another, simply 

 congregating because the surroundings are attrac- 

 tive. Cunners, like other rockfish, spend much 

 of the time resting quietly or swimming slowly 

 among the bunches of Irish moss (Chondrus) and 

 fronds of kelp, or in the open spaces among 

 the eel grass (Zostera), wherever the latter has 

 reestabhshed itself, always on the lookout for food. 



Cunners are year-round residents, broadly 

 speaking, wherever they are found. At the most, 

 they may descend into shghtly deeper water to 

 pass the coldest months, 76 or they may desert the 

 shoalest parts of certain enclosed bays in midsum- 

 mer to escape the very high temperatures produced 

 there as the sun strikes the flats at low tide. They 

 have been described as hibernating in the mud 

 during the winter, or at least as lying among eel 

 grass or rocks in a more or less torpid state. But 

 we find no positive evidence of this; on the 

 contrary, practical fishermen, among them Capt. 

 L. B. Goodspeed, to whom we are indebted for 

 many notes, inform us that cunners are to be caught 

 in abundance on precisely the same spots in winter 

 as in summer. In fact a few are landed in Boston 

 during the cold months, and the only reason more 

 are not brought in then is that there is so little 

 demand for them. 



It has long been known that the cunner is 

 vulnerable to very low temperatures. Hazards 

 of this sort are more frequent south of Cape Cod, 

 where the fish are more likely to be caught in very 

 shoal water in a sudden freeze, than in the Gulf of 

 Maine, where active mixing by the tide usually 

 prevents the water from chilling to the danger 

 point, except at the surface. However, this did 

 take place in Massachusetts Bay in the winter of 

 1835, when cunners came ashore in quantities 

 between Marblehead and Gloucester. And the 

 failure of the cunners to produce young within 

 the Bay of Fundy (p. 478) suggest that the lower 

 thermal limit to their successful reproduction is 

 about 55°-56°, though the young fry as well as 

 the adults are at home in temperatures close 

 to the freezing point of salt water. The upper 



'• Ambrose (Proe. and Trans., Nova Scotian Inst. Nat. Sci., vol. 2, No. 2, 

 1870, p. 93) describes the cunners as moving out of Saint Margaret Bay. 

 Nova Scotia, in autumn, to return early in May. 



