FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



497 



as far north on the Labrador coast as Ungava 

 Bay. 69 



Shanny Leptoclinus maculatus (Fries) 1837 



Langbarn 



Jordan and Evermann, 1896-1900, p. 2433. 



Description. — The shanny resembles the snake 

 blenny somewhat in general appearance and in 

 the location and shape of its dorsal and anal fins, 

 but is not so slender (only 10 to 12 times as long 

 as it is deep instead of about 20 times). The most 

 important points of difference (aside from its more 

 robust form) are that the tail of the shanny is 

 about straight in outline instead of narrowly oval 

 or pointed as it is in the snake blenny; that the 

 lower rays of its pectoral are the longest and are 

 separate at their tips; and that the shanny has 

 only 58 to 61 dorsal fin spines, and 35 to 38 anal 

 fin rays. 



Color. — Dirty-yellowish, paler below, the back 

 and sides marked with indistinct yellowish-brown 

 blotches of various sizes. The dorsal fin is de- 

 scribed as barred obliquely with about 10 rows of 

 brownish dots and the pectorals as cross-barred 

 with about 5 rows. These fins show no distinct 

 markings on the several preserved specimens we 

 have examined; the caudal fin, however, shows one 

 or two dark crossbars, even after preservation. 



Size. — Maximum length about 7 inches. 



Habits and food. — In Scandinavian waters the 

 shanny spends most of the year in deep water, 

 probably coming up to the shallows to spawn. 

 In the aquarium it keeps close to the bottom, 

 with the body extended and the pectoral fins ex- 

 panded, and apparently supports itself on the free 

 lower rays of those fins. 70 Annelid worms and 

 pelagic amphipods have been found in shanny 

 stomachs; this is all that is known of their mode 

 of life. The shanny is supposed to spawn in 



•• Kendall, Proc Portland Soo. Nat. Hist., vol. 2, No. 13, 1909, p. 224. 

 '• Smitt, Scandinavian Fishes, vol. 1, 1892, p. 230. 



winter, but neither its eggs nor its larvae have 

 ever been seen. 



General range. — An Arctic fish, known south to 

 Norway and Sweden in the eastern side of the 

 Atlantic, and to Cape Cod in the western side. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — Definite rec- 

 ords of this Arctic fish for the Gulf of Maine are 

 of several specimens that were collected in 40 to 

 90 fathoms in Massachusetts Bay by the U. S. 

 Fish Commission in 1887 ; 71 one that we took in a 

 tow net near Boone Island on March 4, 1920; 

 one from the northeast part of Georges Bank, 

 August 1926, and four (4 to 4% inches long) that 

 were trawled off Chatham, Cape Cod, in 28 fath- 

 oms, May 1, 1930, by the Albatross II. This pau- 

 city of captures suggests that it enters the Gulf 

 only as a chance straggler from the north, perhaps 

 maintaining itself in small numbers in the bottoms 

 of the deep isolated troughs where the water is 

 coldest. 



The nearest records of it to the eastward and 

 northward are of fish taken off the Atlantic Coast 

 of Cape Breton, 72 from the estuary of the St. 

 Lawrence River near Trois Pistoles; 73 from St. 

 Mary's Bay on the south coast of Newfoundland, 

 from the eastern part of the Grand Banks, and off 

 the east coast of the Avalon Peninsula, New- 

 foundland. 



Arctic shanny Stichaeus punctatus (Fabricius) 

 1780 



Jordan and Evermann, 1896-1900, p. 2439. 



Description. — This shanny suggests the rock eel 

 in its color pattern. But it is easily distinguished 

 from it by having well developed ventral fins and 

 considerably larger pectorals, but fewer dorsal fin 



71 Presumably the Gulf of Maine specimens reported by Kendall (Proc. 

 Portland Soc. Nat. Hist., vol. 3, 1914, p. 62), now in the United States Na- 

 tional Museum, are this lot. 



73 By the Newfoundland Fisheries Research Commission; also it is listed 

 from Nova Scotia without locality, see Vladykov and McKenzie (Proc. 

 Nova Scotian Inst. Sci., vol. 19, 1935, p. 104). 



'i Vladykov and Tremblay, Natural. Canad. vol. 62 (Ser. 3, vol. 6), 1935, 

 p. 81. 



Figure 261. — Shanny (Leptoclinus maculatus). After Collett. 



