Fishes of the Western North Atlantic 443 



ton, South Carolina 5 they are among the more plentiful of summer sharks in the vicinity 

 of Cape Lookout, where there is record of as many as 65 taken in a single haul of a seine 5 

 and numbers of them enter the shoal North Carolina sounds in some summers but only 

 occasionally in others. Although they appear as strays only in Chesapeake Bay, Hammer- 

 heads are common summer visitors to the Atlantic coasts of Maryland, New Jersey and 

 New York, where they are present yearly from July until October in varying numbers, 

 not only offshore but in the shallow coastal bays as well. They even enter New York Har- 

 bor occasionally} in fact one of the largest Hammerheads on record north of Cape Hatteras 

 (about 1 1 feet) was taken many years ago at the head of Peconic Bay, Long Island. Farther 

 east along southern New England they appear less often inshore, although there are a few 

 records for Connecticut and Rhode Island, as well as many reports of them at Woods 

 Hole and Nantucket for summer and early autumn (July to October) ; we obtained a 6- 

 foot female from a trap near Woods Hole in August 1944. But Hammerheads basking at 

 the surface are familiar objects a few miles offshore along this sector, as we can bear 

 witness, and they are brought in from time to time by tuna and other fishermen. There 

 are also a few records for the tip of Cape Cod, one for the inner part of Massachusetts Bay, 

 and for Casco Bay, Maine, where the capture of two small ones, no doubt zygaena, has 

 been reported to us." But the longitude of Cape Cod so sharply bounds their coastwise 

 dispersal in this direction that there are only two records of Hammerheads farther east 

 on the continental shelf, one for Halifax, Nova Scotia, the other (a 12-foot specimen 

 caught in August 1928) between Georges and Browns Banks. Outside the edge of the con- 

 tinental shelf, in the sweep of the Gulf Stream, Hammerheads (probably both zygaena and 

 diplana) are to be expected much farther to the east and north, perhaps even past the New- 

 foundland Banks. 



The great majority of individuals sharing in the summer movement northward are 

 small (less than 6 feet). In fact, many of them are so small as to suggest that they were 

 born only a short time previously. Dozens of little ones, of about 2V2 feet, have been 

 seined on the outer shore of Long Island in August. This has led to the suggestion that 

 they are born in northern coastal waters, but on the other hand large ones are seldom taken 

 near shore along our northern coast,** making it more likely that whatever production of 

 young there may be in the northern sector of the range takes place well offshore. 



Off New York and to the eastward Hammerheads usually disappear when the tem- 

 perature of the water falls below 67° F., i.e., by late September or early October. Occa- 

 sionally, however, one lingers into November, and there is even one record for February 

 in Long Island Sound. It is not known if the Hammerheads that reach the shores of the 

 northeastern United States in the summer migrate south again in the autumn, or if they 

 merely move offshore to escape falling temperatures and are then picked up by the sweep 

 of the Gulf Stream and so lost to the parent population. 



Information as to the status of zygaena coastwise in South American waters south- 



+3. W. H. Rich saw these in the fish market at Portland, Maine. 



44. Exceptions to this rule are specimens 1 1 feet i inch, from North Carolina, of 1 1 feet from Long Island, New 

 York, and 9 feet 10 inches from Rhode Island. 



