(1954:385-387) reporting on a tagging program, 

 have shown that some specimens that were 

 tagged in the western quarter of Long Island 

 were later recovered in the Chesapeake Bay. 



Tables 42 and 43 show that the means of 

 the Canadian samples are similar to those of 

 the Chesapeake area. Merriman (1941:41-42) 

 thought that there were two possibilities for the 

 presence of striped bass in Nova Scotia: first, 

 that these fish are of northern origin and are 

 completely separated from the populations far- 

 ther south; and second, that they are of mixed 

 origin from both north and south. Raney (1952: 

 21) speculates that striped bass migrating north- 

 eastward from their wintering areas in the 

 Chesapeake Bay and other more limited areas 

 in New Jersey and New York probably travel to 

 Canadian shores in some years. Raney (person- 

 al communication) considers that stocks in Nova 

 Scotia, New Brunswick and the St. Lawrence 

 River seem to be semi -endemic but were ob- 

 viously drawn from post Pleistocene northward 

 migrants of the Chesapeake race. The close 

 relationship between the Canadian samples and 

 the Chesapeake Bay samples is upheld by the non- 

 significant result of a t -test between the 

 Miramichi River sample and the York -Rappa- 

 hannock samples for the 1955 year class, the 

 only year class from which samples are avail- 

 able from both areas . 



Merriman (1941:42) considered that 

 striped bass from the area north and south of 

 Cape Hatteras as separate populations based on 

 absence of returns from tagged fish . Raney and 

 Woolcott (1954:449X working with samples of 

 striped bass from the Santee -Cooper River 

 System, South Carolina, found an increase in 

 lateral line scales and a slight increase in fin 

 ray counts in an upstream direction. They 

 tentatively concluded that the South Carolina 

 stock was an endemic race which in turn is dif- 

 ferentiated into upstream and downstream forms. 

 Scruggs and Fuller (1955) studied samples in the 

 Santee -Cooper River System and found that op- 

 portunity of exchange between the reservoir and 

 Cooper River populations is restricted to the 

 operating schedule of the navigation lock at 

 Pinopolis Dam and that little transfer takes place; 

 also spawning occurs above and below the dam . 

 They found that the population in the Cooper 



River migrated within the river on a seasonal 

 basis but none were found to move into salt 

 water. No highly significant differences in gill 

 raker counts were found in samples from above 

 and below Pinopolis Dam . 



Vladykov and Wallace (1952: 148) thought 

 that the number of gill rakers of striped bass 

 varied inversely with length and presumably with 

 the age of the fish and thus felt that this char- 

 acter was not helpful in separating races. They 

 presented a table which showed counts of gill 

 rakers from samples from Potomac River, James 

 River, middle Chesapeake Bay and North Carolina. 

 Their counts of the number of gill rakers on the 

 upper arm of the first branchial arch were com- 

 parable with the counts made in this present 

 paper. However, their counts for the total num- 

 ber of gill rakers were consistantly lower by 

 approximately one gill raker on the average . It 

 is possible that they did not define a gill raker 

 in the same way, especially in reference to the 

 smaller gill rakers at the end of the lower arm . 

 In this study almost all the specimens counted 

 were less than 300 mm. In standard length; these 

 showed no change with length. Vladykov and 

 Wallace (1952) used specimens mostly larger 

 than 300 mm . and most of the counts were made 

 in the field. Since the point of origin was not 

 known it seems that some differences recorded 

 by them may be populational differences. 



Tables 42 and 43 show that there is little 

 variation In the sample means from Cape Fear, 

 North Carolina to those from the Susquehanna 

 River in the northern Chesapeake Bay. Within 

 this range environmental differences occur and 

 it seems likely that if the number of gill rakers 

 was not genetically fixed that greater variation 

 between different localities would occur. 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 



1 . There is only random change in the 

 number of gill rakers for specimens of the and 

 I age groups . 



2 . The number of gill rakers does not 

 vary between the sexes. 



3 . It was not deemed that there was any 

 biological differences in the number of gill rakers 



13 



