6 GEORGE V SESSIONAL PAPER No. 38a A. 1916 



VII. 



INVESTIGATION OF A DISEASE OE THE HERKING (CLUPEA HAREN- 

 GU8) IN THE GULF OF ST, LAWRENCE, 1914. 



By Professor Philip Cox, Ph.D., etc.. 

 Professor of Natural History, University of New Brunswich, Fredericton, N.B. 



(With Two Plates.) 



About June 15, a large run of small herring, from 6 to 8 inches long, appeared 

 in the shore waters of the straits and at certain points of the Chaleurs bay. The 

 schools were especially large from Bathurst to Shediac — a littoral of nearly 200 miles — 

 and remained till about the 10th of July. The lish died in great numbers, were 

 washed ashore on the beaches or sand reefs, skirting the coast, or in quiet coves 

 littered the bottom. From various points along the coast reports reached the depart- 

 ment, and specimens were sent to the Commissioner of Fisheries, Professor Prince, 

 Ottawa, but he was absent in New Zealand, and the specimens were stored. 



The previous year had witnessed a similar phenomenon, but the discnsed fish 

 appeared earlier, about June 1, and before the annual run of spawning spring herring 

 had left the coast. The latter became involved in the epidemic, and many died; but, 

 as the season advanced, the large fish became fewer and fewer until only small ones 

 were in evidence. 



Fishermen recalled the fact, too, that sixteen years before a similar run of 

 diseased fish had visited the coast, and as schools of young herring are very unusual 

 in those waters, it was suggested that the epidemic may be the determining cause of 

 the movement. 



About the 20th of July, 1914, Prof. A. B. Macallum, University of Toronto, and 

 secretary-treasurer of the Marine Biological Board of Canada, requested the writer 

 to examine and report on the matter. Unfortunately the schools had disappeared; 

 but an examination of the coast in the neighbourhood of Richibucto yielded two 

 specimens and a fragment of a third — material altogether too scanty, it was thought, 

 for solving the cause of the epidemic, as the death of these individuals might not be 

 due to the general disease at all. A prompt report of the character of the sickness 

 and general conditions, gathered from fishermen, was made to the Fisheries Depart- 

 ment, and there the matter rested, until a careful examination of the two specimens 

 was made at the Marine Biological Station, St. Andrews, the result of which is briefly 

 set forth in this paper. 



Here it may be remarked that these specimens (see fig. 1) seem to belong to the 

 sea variety and not the coast variety of herring, for the body is rounder, the dorsal 

 insertion more anterior, and the head not so deep as in the latter; but one of these 

 characters is undoubtedly accentuated by the poor condition due to a wasting disease. 

 If this be so, it would seem as if the epidemic were oceanic and not littoral in its 

 origin, and, as before suggested, the shoreward movement may be a result of the 

 general infection. 



The ocean variety visits the Northumberland straits in midsummer and seems 

 to spawn in July, for on the occasion of my visit they were being taken some milea 

 off, in a gravid state, with ripe ova. 



3-Sa— 6 



