individuals which run from 6 to 8 

 inches in length and which are be- 

 lieved locally to come up from Flor- 

 ida. Usually these fish strike shore- 

 ward about the latitude of Fernandina, 

 moving north and paralleling the 

 coast, supplying a good fishery at 

 Mayport, Florida. For the past four 

 years, however, they have scarcely 

 touched Mayport, and snapper fisher- 

 men working 30 miles out have re- 

 ported great schools moving north. 

 In these recent years they have 

 struck first off the South Carolina 

 coast about Georgetown and are 

 called in North Carolina the 

 'Georgetown-flats' fish. These fish 

 support the fishery in North Car olina 

 until August, when they disappear." 



Ellison further stated that the fish 

 -eached the Chesapeake region in 

 March and April, the New Jersey and 

 New York region in April and May, and 

 the Maine coast in May and June. These 

 dates are much the same as those 

 given by Goode (1879), who reviewed 

 all available information up to that 

 time. Goode's data included precise 

 dates for a 20-year period from some 

 areas of the Atlantic coast. He did not 

 know whether fish went south in the 

 winter or merely offshore. 



Menhaden do not always go as far 

 north as the Gulf of Maine in summer, 

 and combined data from Bigelow and 

 Welsh ( 1 925) and Bigelow and Schroeder 

 (1953) showed that between 1845 and 

 1950, inclusive, menhaden had been 

 plentiful to abundant there during only 

 15 of 66 years reported. 



It has been generally agreed that 

 temperature governs the north and 

 south migrations of menhaden and that 

 menhaden do not enter waters of tem- 

 peratures less than 50° F. (cf. Ellison, 

 1951). Goode (1879) collected tem- 

 perature records along the coast and 

 compared them with the time of ap- 

 pearance of the menhaden. This infor- 

 mation led him to state that menhaden 

 appeared after the water temperatures 

 rose to 50° to 51 F. and preferred 

 temperatures between 60° and 70°. 

 Bean (1903) noted that adult menhaden 

 in aquaria died at temperatures lower 



than 50° F. Bigelow and Schroeder 

 (1953) said their observations cor- 

 roborated the idea that menhaden did 

 not appear in the Gulf of Maine until 

 it was several degrees above 50. Con- 

 versely, falling temperatures drove the 

 fish southward in the fall. 



Edwards (Kendall, 1910) found that 

 young menhaden could survive cold 

 better than their elders. Fish 2 to 5 

 inches long survived water tempera- 

 tures of 31.5° F. Better survival of 

 young than of older fish at low tem- 

 peratures was independently observed 

 for other fishes by S. F. Hildebrand 

 and Gordon Gunter following cold spells 

 on the south Atlantic and Gulf coasts. 

 The literature was documented by 

 Gunter (1957). 



In their long migration from the 

 south Atlantic coast to New England 

 and back, menhaden do not follow pre- 

 cise routes. A "run" may strike shore 

 for many years and then suddenly 

 change and pass as much as 50 miles 

 offshore. Such changes in migration 

 routes may leave established menhaden 

 plants fishless for several years. Elli- 

 son (1951) has given examples. 



June (1958) studied the variation 

 in meristic characters of young 

 Brevoortia tyrannus to determine 



whether one or more populations occur 

 in estuarine nursery areas along the 

 Atlantic coast. Vertebrae, ventral 

 scutes, dorsal, and left pectoral fin 

 rays were the meristic characters 

 selected for examination. Counts were 

 made on almost two thousand speci- 

 mens taken from 21 locations between 

 Cape Cod and southern Georgia. 



Preliminary studies indicated that 

 mean counts do not vary with sex, 

 length of fish over the size range 

 (28-150 mm.) represented, or between 

 right and left pectoral fins. Analysis 

 of variance applied to the meristic 

 data gave no evidence of heterogeneity 

 between the means of successive sam- 

 ples taken in any locality. 



At least two populations of juvenile 

 menhaden inhabiting the estuarine 

 waters of the Atlantic coast of the 



11 



