instamce where the belhes of red hake were distended 

 with sand lance, Ammodytes sp. In an earher paper, 

 Linton (1901) reported finding shrimp, araphipods, and 

 the lenses of some small fish in red hake stomachs, and 

 Breder (1922) noted that the one stomach he examined 

 was full of prawns. From the current study (Table 1), red 

 hake has been identified as a mixed feeder, preying on 

 both fish and invertebrates. Crustaceans were the most 

 important prey, followed by fish, molluscs, polychaetes, 

 and echinoderms, in decreasing quantities. Vinogradov 

 (1972) examined the stomachs of 5,486 red hake col- 

 lected in the northwest Atlantic and, based on fre- 

 quency of occurrence, found that invertebrates were the 

 most important prey although substantial numbers of 

 fish and squid were also consumed. Vinogradov's study 

 was conducted from 1965 through 1967, and our study 

 from 1969 through 1972. Over these years the major prey 

 of northwest Atlantic red hake appears to have been the 

 same, with any differences observed in the species com- 

 position of the diet most likely relating to differences in 

 the sampling sites and local abundance of certain prey. 



Spotted hake.— Spotted hake were identified as mix- 

 ed feeders, relying on both crustaceans and fish as major 

 prey (Table 1), although cephalopods were also some- 

 what important. Comparative data on the diet of these 

 predators are scanty. Hildebrand and Schroeder (1928) 

 noted mysids in the stomachs of small hake from Chesa- 

 peake Bay and Bigelow and Schroeder (1953) only men- 

 tioned the food of spotted hake in passing, noting that it 

 fed on fish, squid, and crustaceans. More recently, Si- 

 kora et al. (1972) examined the gut contents of 341 juven- 

 ile spotted hake and identified crustaceans, especially 

 the macruran mud shrimp, L'pogebia affinis, as the most 

 important prey, while fish ranked second in the diet. 

 Comparative information on the food of adult spotted 

 hake is completely lacking. 



Haddock. — Haddock has a long history of com- 

 mercial importance and as a result a voluminous amount 

 of dietary information has been collected over the years 

 and the literature on the North American stocks alone is 

 reasonably extensive: Atwood 1866; Verrill 1871, 1873; 

 Baird 1889; Willis 1890; Kendall 1898; Clapp 1912; 

 Needier 1929; Vladykov 1933; Homans and Needier 1944; 

 Bigelow and Schroeder 1953; Wigley 1956; Templeman 

 1965; Wigley and Theroux 1965; Kohler and Fitzgerald 

 1969; Tyler 1972. 



In one of the earliest papers, Baird (1889) remarked 

 that a complete listing of the prey of haddock would in- 

 clude almost all the fauna of any given area. An ex- 

 amination of the papers listed above gives much cred- 

 ibility to such a statement. It would be impossible to 

 generally classify the haddock's dietary preferences ex- 

 cept to say that they usually prey more heavily on 

 benthic invertebrates than fish although they are highly 

 opportunistic and will prey on, for example, fish eggs if 

 they are available. Within one of the geographic areas 

 considered here the diversity in the haddock's diet has 

 been clearly demonstrated by Wigley (1956). He inves- 



tigated the haddock's food habits on Georges Bank and 

 found that the data warranted a division of the bank into 

 three different food-type areas. 



The results from our study (Table 1) indicate that 

 ophiuroids were the most important prey and that poly- 

 chaetes, crustaceans, and fish eggs ranked second in 

 importance. The significance of fish eggs in the diet is of 

 some interest. Bigelow and Schroeder (1953) stated that 

 haddock have been accused of feeding on herring spawn 

 but they doubted that this was true. Our observations 

 do, in fact, confirm that haddock will prey greedily on 

 herring spawn as had also been reported by Bowman 

 (1923) and Nikolsky (1963). This type of feeding be- 

 havior is not uncommon since haddock have also been 

 found to consume quantities of fish eggs when the 

 capelin, Mallotus villosus, spawn in the Barents Sea 

 (Tseeb 1960) and on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland 

 (Templeman 1965). These results confirm the benthic 

 nature of haddock feeding. 



Fourbeard rockling. — According to Bigelow and 

 Schroeder (1953) the food habits of the fourbeard rock- 

 ling have not been investigated on this side of the Atlan- 

 tic. From reports on the stomach contents of British and 

 Scandinavian fish they concluded that the American 

 fourbeard rockling would probably eat shrimp, isopods, 

 other small crustaceans, and fish fry. Leim and Scott 

 (1966) commented that much of the biolog>' of the 

 fourbeard rockling is unknown since it is rarely caught in 

 commercial trawls because of its small size. They also 

 suggested that it would eat small crustaceans and fish 

 but gave no further details. In the study reported here, a 

 total of 48 stomachs was examined and our observations 

 confirm the suppositions of these previous authors. The 

 major prey were found to be crustaceans, with the sand 

 shrimp, Crangon septemspinosa, being of primary im- 

 portance (Table 1). 



Macrouridae. — There is little information on the food 

 of either the marlin-spike or the longnose grenadier; how- 

 ever, other grenadiers are generalists in their feeding 

 habits (Pearcy and Ambler 1974; Haedrich and Hender- 

 son 1974). We found that crustaceans and polychaetes 

 were the major prey of the marlin-spike (Table 1). While 

 too few fish were collected to make any firm conclusions 

 regarding the feeding habits, our results agree with ob- 

 servations by Hansen (1915) and Bigelow and Schroeder 

 (1953). 



Ocean pout. — Ocean pout are a bottom fish which 

 prey heavily on echinoderms and crustaceans (Table 1). 

 Almost three-fourths of their diet consisted of the sand 

 dollar while rock crabs and amphipods accounted for the 

 majority of the crustaceans. Olsen and Merriman (1946) 

 collected ocean pout in the southwestern part of the Gulf 

 of Maine and in Southern New England where they iden- 

 tified the sand dollar as the major prey. They reported 

 rock crabs and the amphipod, Unciota, as being of sec- 

 ondary importance although some fish had also eaten bi- 

 valve molluscs such as Yoldia and Pecten. Smith (1950) 



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