United States were indicated, one oc- 

 curring north of Long Island and another 

 south of Long Island. Internningling 

 occurred in the vicinity of Long Island. 

 Difference in mean water temperature 

 during the time of spawning and early 

 larval development may account for the 

 observed differences in mean meristic 

 counts between the two areas. 



June and Reintjes (1959) noted that 

 the purse-seine fishery depended on 

 the appearance of schools of menhaden 

 at the surface. Fishing started in April 

 on the Florida coast, and by June the 

 fish ranged from northern Florida to 

 the Gulf of Maine. In September and 

 October the schools began todisappear 

 from the most northerly areas, and 

 withdrawal proceeded southward during 

 October. In November and December 

 vast bodies of fish supported a sizable 

 fishery off the North Carolina coast 

 until early January when they once 

 more disappeared fronn coastal sur- 

 face water. 



Food and Feeding 



According to Goode (1879) a num- 

 ber of previous workers had observed 

 minute organisms and the presence of 

 chlorophyll in menhaden stomachs. 

 However, other workers he quoted, in- 

 cluding A. E. Verrill, thought such 

 matter was sucked up with the bottom 

 mud. Goode called attention to the fine 

 gill-rakers and the fish's manner of 

 swimming with open nnouth, as if 

 straining the water. 



The definitive work on feeding and 

 food of the nnenhaden was done by 

 Peck (1894). He showed how the lamel- 

 lae of the gill-rakers overlap "each 

 other in the most perfect manner" and 

 form a fine net for sieving the food 

 from the water. He described a fold of 

 mucous membrane, filled with mucous, 

 which runs along each gill arch at the 

 base of the gill-rakers to form a 

 channel and, presumably, acts as a 

 groove to carry food into the gullet. 

 Peck's statement, "Whether there are 

 definite ciliated tracts with this func- 

 tion of conveying solid particles is not 

 yet known," still holds true. 



Peck's chief conclusion, which he 

 documented by drawings of plankton in 

 the microscope field, was that menha- 

 den are indiscriminate feeders, and in 

 general take in the same materials in 

 the same proportions as they are found 

 in the water. In the shore waters around 

 Woods Hole, which Peck studied, these 

 materials were predominantly dino- 

 flagellates, diatoms and infusorians, 

 with annelid larvae and crustaceans in 

 lesser abundance. Peck worked mostly 

 with inshore and smaller fish, but 

 found that the young ate the same food 

 as the adults. 



Peck estimated the volume of water 

 strained by an adult menhaden and 

 arrived at a figure of 7 gallons per 

 minute. He estimated the food material 

 in this amount of water to be 3.4 cc. 



Hildebrand and Schroeder (1928) 

 summiarized the findings of Dr. Edwin 

 Linton who examined the alimentary 

 contents of 44 fish in Chesapeake Bay, 

 "and found that in most cases they 

 consisted of sandy mud, vegetable 

 debris (mostly algae), and sonne dia- 

 toms, and in a few cases they consisted 

 principally of copepods." 



The following remarks are taken 

 from Bigelow and Schroeder (1953): 



"No other Gulf of Maine fish has 

 a filtering apparatus comparable to 

 that of the pogy, nor has it any rival 

 in the Gulf in its utilization of the 

 planktonic vegetable pasture. 



". . . And the food eaten at a given 

 locality parallels the general plank- 

 ton content of the water, except that 

 none of the larger aninnals appear in 

 the stomachs of the fish on the one 

 hand, nor the very smallest organ- 

 isms (. . .) on the other." 



Schroeder (Hildebrand and Schroe- 

 der, 1928) observed that feeding fish 

 swam in circles, rising and falling, 

 renninding him of a whirlwind. 



Ellison (1951) said the "catholic 

 and non-discriminating taste distin- 

 guishes the menhaden as strongly 



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