1 2 o Memoir Sears Foundation for Marine Research 



coast southward to Pernambuco, or even to Bahia,^ though the most southerly 

 definite record is for Lake Papary, Rio Grande do Norte, in the general vicinity of 

 Natal {6^: 8). Thence northward the range is evidently unbroken around the South 

 American coast, where it has been recorded for: Marajo Island at the mouth of the 

 Amazon (5: 298); French Guiana {^y. 164); Trinidad, where it has been reported 

 as very plentiful {fig: 26); and Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela, and its tributary Rio Con- 

 cha, where several were seen rolling and a school was reported {62: 33). It is equally 

 omnipresent in suitable situations all along the Central American littoral, including: the 

 Panama Canal to Gatun Lake; the San Juan River (p. 117); and Lake Nicaragua, 

 where it is so plentiful that a recent writer reported seeing "more than a dozen 

 rolling at the surface at one time" (52: 184). As every angler knows, the Tarpon 

 abounds near river mouths and in so-called "passes" along the coasts of Mexico and 

 Texas. Indeed, it is not unusual to find a Tarpon 80 or 100 miles up from the sea in 

 some Mexican rivers (/j: 219). In fact, the Bay of Campeche, just west of Yucatan, 

 was the site of a more or less regular fishery for it as early as about 1675 (Capt. Wm. 

 Dampier, cited from Gowanloch, 2g: 145—146). Proverbial centers of abundance are 

 the mouth of the Panuco River, near Tampico, Mexico, and Aransas Pass, Texas. 

 The Tarpon, as Gowanloch {2g: 154) expressed it, is to be found near almost any 

 coastal island or bay of Louisiana, Alabama, the western coast of Florida, and the 

 eastern coast of Florida, northward in summer about to the vicinity of Daytona. Espe- 

 cially renowned fishing grounds are: the Calcasieu River, some 30 miles east of the 

 Texas boundary; Grand Isle, Louisiana; Boca Grande and Captiva, western Florida; 

 the waterways and rivers among the Thousand Islands, and the interior waterways of 

 the Florida Keys (see also p. 1 1 9). 



The Tarpon is widespread but seemingly not very abundant except perhaps locally 

 throughout the West Indian region in general. More than a century ago it had been 

 reported in scientific literature for Guadeloupe, Martinique, Santo Domingo, and 

 Jamaica (20: 399). It has been reported for Haiti (j: 143) and is common around 

 the Barbados and Puerto Rico. In some rivers of Cuba it is so abundant that a party 

 of anglers has reported hooking 105 large ones in a day in the Rio Encantado (jj: 

 205). Among the Bahamas a few are seen, and an occasional one is taken off Bimini 

 (jj: 207; also personal communication from Vladimir Walters); it is common around 

 Andros Island {ll: 66), and is taken or seen occasionally around Bermuda. 



The Tarpon ranges in small numbers northward to North Carolina in some sum- 

 mers, and perhaps every summer; but large schools are sometimes seen as far north 

 as Cape Lookout. A five-foot fish has been taken off Hatteras, and the North Carolina 

 State Museum has one of 1 19 pounds from Beaufort, and another of 176 pounds from 

 Wilmington {64: 115). But it appears only as a straggler and at irregular intervals 

 farther north. It has been reported for the lower part of Chesapeake Bay by fisher- 

 men (5<S: 80); there are odd records of it for New Jersey, near Sandy Hook (2j: 



5. The first published account of the Tarpon, by Marcgrave {50)., was probably based on examples from Recife (Per- 

 nambuco) or Salvador (Bahia). — G. S. Myers. 



