FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



481 



to a considerable extent on sea worms (Nereis); 

 certainly they take these freely as bait. 



Breeding habits. — About Woods Hole the tautog 

 spawn chiefly in June, and the season for such of 

 them as breed north of Cape Cod is probably 

 early and midsummer. The eggs are buoyant, 

 without oil globule and resemble those of the 

 cunner, except that they are a little larger (0.9 to 

 1 mm. in diameter). At a temperature of 68° to 

 72° incubation occupies 42 to 45 hours, and prob- 

 ably 10 to 12 hours longer in the cooler water of 

 Massachusetts Bay. The larvae 97 are about 2.2 

 mm. long at hatching. When 4 days old (tem- 

 perature of 68°-72°) they have grown to 3.3 mm., 

 the 3 r olk has been absorbed, and the mouth is 

 fully formed. Larvae of 5 mm. show the first 

 traces of the caudal fin rays; the dorsal and anal 

 fins are differentiated at 10 mm. and by the time 

 the little fish are about 30 mm. long they show 

 the fins, form, deep caudal peduncle, and blunt 

 nose of the adult tautog. The larvae and youngest 

 fry of the tautog and of the cunner resemble each 

 other closely in general form, but the arrangement 

 of the pigment offers a ready means of identifica- 

 tion at all but the very earliest stages, for the 

 black pigment cells remain more or less uniformly 

 scattered over the whole trunk in the tautog, 

 whereas they soon cluster in two definite patches 

 in the cunner as is described elsewhere (p. 476). 



Probably Tracy 98 is correct in assuming that the 

 young tautogs of 3 to 8 inches, which may be seined 

 in abundance along the shores of southern New 

 England in summer, are 1 year old. Nothing 

 definite is known of the rate of growth of older 

 tautog, nor at what age they mature. But we 

 suspect that large ones of 8 pounds and more may 

 be 8 to 10 years old. 



General range. — Atlantic coast of North Amer- 

 ica from the outer coast of Nova Scotia to South 

 Carolina, chiefly south of Cape Ann; most abun- 

 dant between Cape Cod and the Delaware Capes, 

 and restricted to the immediate vicinity of the 

 coast. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — The center of 

 abundance of the tautog lies to the south of Cape 

 Cod. Most of the authors, in fact, who have 

 written of it have accepted Mitchill's " statement 



that it was not native north of Cape Cod and was 

 introduced there shortly prior to 1814, there being 

 no definite record of them in the Gulf of Maine 

 prior to that date. But it seems far more likely 

 that the anonymous writer who stated in the 

 Gloucester Telegraph of May 5, 1860, that tautog 

 had been plentiful there many years before, and 

 had merely reappeared after a period of scarcity, 

 was correct; also that this reappearance would 

 have taken place in any event, even if none had 

 been liberated north of Cape Cod. 



Apart from Mitchill's statement that by 1814 

 the Boston market had a full supply (which may 

 have come from south and not north of Cape 

 Cod), the first positive record of any in Massa- 

 chusetts Bay is of several that were caught along 

 the Cohasset rocks in 1824, ' which the local fisher- 

 men said was a species new to them. Tautog, 

 however, were being caught in numbers in the 

 inner parts of Massachusetts Bay (e. g., Lynn, 

 Nahant, Boston Harbor) by 1839; they were more 

 abundant then around Manomet Headland in 

 Plymouth; and they already supported a con- 

 siderable hook-and-line fishery at Wellfleet. A 

 few years later their presence was established for 

 the coast of Maine, and in 1851 tautog were re- 

 ported as common (according to Perley) in St. 

 John Harbor, New Brunswick, though these Bay 

 of Fundy fish were introduced (not native). In 

 1876 the weirs north of Cape Cod took 2,274 

 pounds of tautog, and in 1879 Goode and Bean 

 described them as abundant in many localities 

 about Cape Ann. 



At present (or within the last few years, for this 

 fish fluctuates in abundance from year to year), 

 the regular range of the tautog includes the whole 

 coast line from Cape Cod around to Cape Ann, in 

 suitable localities. 



Tautog are less regular northward from Cape 

 Ann, less abundant, and more local. But there 

 are some tautog grounds about the Isles of Shoals, 

 off Cape Porpoise, and about Casco Bay, where 

 Kendall wrote of them in 1931 as having been 

 "locally numerous" for some time previous. 2 We 

 have also heard of tautog along the ledges near 

 Boothbay Harbor and in Penobscot Bay. East 

 of the latter tautog certainly are not common. 



« Kuntz and Radclifle (Bull. U. S. Bur. Fish., vol.35, 1918, p. 92) describe 

 the eggs, larvae, and fry. 

 •• 40th Ann. Kept. Inland. Fish. Rhode Island, 1910, p. 137. 

 » Trans. Lit. Philos. Soc., New York, vol. 1. 1815, p. 400. 



210941—53 82 



' Goode, Fish. Ind., U. S., Sect. 1, 1884 p. 269. 



•According to Kendall (Bull. 58, Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., 1931, p. 10-11) 

 the green crabs (Carcliinides matnas) found In Casco Bay were not native 

 there but had been Introduced as tautog bait. 



