588 Memoir Sears Foundation for Marine Research 



Food. Capelin feed chiefly on euphausiid shrimps as well as various isopod-, gam- 

 marid-, and copepod-crustaceans. The stomachs of Capelin taken from among the 

 spawning schools have been found full of Capelin eggs — evidence that they may not 

 fast as rigorously at spawning time as various other fishes do. 



Enemies. "A list of the animals that prey on the Capelin would include the names 

 of almost all fish, sea birds and sea mammals that inhabit the parts of the world where 

 capelin are to be found" (Templeman, no: 132). Seals, for example, subsist largely 

 on them; finback whales have often been found full of them; during their periods of 

 abundance they are one of the chief items in the diet of the white whale {Delphinapterus) 

 in the estuary of the St. Lawrence River and no doubt elsewhere ; they are also eaten 

 by the common porpoise of the north {Phocaend) (jj: 47). The nesting colonies of puf- 

 fins, murres, guillemots, gulls, terns, and shearwaters all take heavy toll of them. 

 And the list of fishes known to prey regularly on them includes spiny dogfish {Squalus 

 acanthias), Greenland shark (Somniosus microcepka/us), Atlantic salmon (Sa/mo sa/ar), 

 Arctic charr {Salvelinus alpinus), Atlantic herring {Clupea harengus) which often gorge 

 on Capelin larvae, sculpin (Myoxocephalus), eelpout {Macrozoarces americanus, in American 

 waters), wolffish {Anarrhichas), flounders {Pseudopleuronectes), Greenland halibut (Rein- 

 hardtius hippoglossoides), and Greenland cod (Gadus ogac). But their worst enemy by 

 far on both sides of the Atlantic is the Atlantic cod {Gadus morrhua), which not only 

 devour immense numbers of Capelin when the latter come in to spawn, but also harry 

 the young in deeper water offshore, seemingly without letup. 



Other serious losses to the potential population of the Capelin result from the 

 drying out of great numbers of eggs spawned on the beaches, and from "immense 

 destruction of the exposed spawn [that] is wrought by maggots or small beach flies of 

 the genus Fucellaria" (Sleggs, loo: 44). 



Variations. Neither the average numbers of vertebrae that have been reported for 

 various localities (J7 : 1 21-124; -T-TO: 1 09-1 15; yg: 285-290) nor other numerical 

 and proportional characters {68: 64) have suggested any consistent racial differences 

 between the Capelin of different regions. 



Numerical Abundance. Attention has been called time and again to the multitudes 

 in which Capelin gather when they come inshore. Perhaps it will suffice here to refer 

 to Anspach's description of them in 18 19 in Conception Bay, Newfoundland, as being 

 present in schools so immense as to color the surface of the sea and to enable two 

 persons to fill a common-sized boat with them in less than two hours (2 : 400), and to 

 Hardy's description of the water surface as appearing like "a living mass as far as the 

 eye can reach" (j^: 8, 9). 



However, the only precise available information as to their actual numbers is 

 Slegg's calculation based on the counts of measured samples of beach material {loo: 

 42, 43): The number of eggs per cubic foot was between six and seven million, at 

 which rate "it would require about a third of a million females to furnish the spawn 

 on a hundred yards of beach and a like number of males. When we take into account 

 the spawn below the tidal zone, it seems safe to say that a million capelin spawned upon 



