Table 21. --Recaptures of scup tagged and released at Woods Hole, Mass., and at Wildwood, N. J., sunmers of 1931 to 



1934. --Continued 



[P.N. = pound net; F.T, - floating irap; O.T, = oner irawl; HX. = handline.I 



Released and recaptured 



Caught 

 by 



Tags returned^ 



External 



Tag number 



Date 



Internal 



Tag number Date 



Length 



when 



released 



Experiment Vll 



Released : 



489 scup, Oct. 27 to 28, 1934, Woods Hole, 

 Mass., each fish marked with an external and 

 internal tag (U-shaped) 



Recaptured : 



Southern trawl fishery, winter 1935: 

 Locality not determined 



Reported through market, Brooklyn, N. Y. 

 Reported through market, Newark, N. J. 



Summer fishery, 1935 : 



Off Rockaway Beach, N. Y. 



Off Seal Rock, Newport, R. I. 



Off Orient Point, in Long Island Sound, N. Y. 



Marion Harbor, in Buzzards Bay, Mass. 



Off Long Branch, N. J. 



Off ELberon, N. J. 



Off Seabright, N. J. 



Off So. Dartmouth, in Buzzards Bay, Mass. 



Locality not determined 



Reported through market. New York, N. Y. 



Experiment VIII 



Released : 



71 scup, Nov. U, 1934, Woods Hole, Mass., 

 marked with internal tags (U-shaped) 



Recaptured : 



None to January 1, 1937 



P.N. 



H.L. 

 F.T. 

 P.N. 

 H.L. 

 H.L. 

 H.L. 

 H.L. 

 H.L. 



P.N. 



^ To January 1, 1937. 



8016 

 8195 



8251 

 8191 

 8162 



Mar. 

 Apr. 



27 

 10 



June 12 

 June 16 

 July 2 



114689 

 114574 

 114559 

 114286 

 114324 



114338 



July 3 



Sept. 8 



Sept. 15 



Sept. 26 



Oct. 8 



Aug. 29 



Cm. 



22.5 

 22.5 



21.5 

 22.5 



20.5 

 18.5 

 20.0 

 19.5 

 19.5 

 20.0 



21.0 



A third possible explanation may be that 

 the rise In catch at New York and Rhode 

 Island might have been due to a combination 

 of an Influx of "New Jersey fish" simul- 

 taneously with the presence in average abun- 

 dance of the same year classes of a unit local 

 to New York-Rhode Island. This "overflow" 

 from New Jersey might not have extended to 

 or been of relative importance as far east- 

 ward as Woods Hole where all fish of the 

 northern tagging experiments were originally 

 caught, marked, and released. Thus, it is 

 probable that fish tagged at this point were 

 primarily of a "local unit" and although re- 

 turns indicated a spread of the unit westward 

 to Rhode Island, New York, and New Jersey, 

 distinctness and presence of this "Woods 

 Hole" unit at the latter places may have been 

 masked in recent years by an "overflow" of 



fish from New Jersey where the species have 

 been unusually abundant since 1929. 



Of these three possibilities, it appears that 

 the third, the incursion into the northern area 

 along New York and Rhode Island of large 

 numbers of scup of broods that had been 

 present as smaller- sized fish along the New 

 Jersey coast In preceding summers, together 

 with local fish of the same year classes, 

 caused the rise in catch in 1931 in the New 

 York-Rhode Island pound net and trap fishery 

 and the upward trend to 1935. 



As to the relationships of populations in 

 different areas, the conclusion is that all 

 parts of the summer fishery, together with 

 the winter fishery, draw on a common stock 

 of scup. 



53 



