10 COPEIA. 



the heading "A Freak Fish," a statement with a 

 photograph of the larger was given in the "Pacific 

 Fisherman" for November, as follows: "While the 

 halibut schooner Borealis was fishing with halibut 

 trawls in 240 fathoms of water in Rennel Sound on 

 the west coast of Queen Charlotte Island, British 

 Columbia, during October, a fish which weighed, in 

 the round 175 pounds, and when dressed 145 pounds, 

 was caught. It measured 5 feet 10 inches in length." 

 The opinion was expressed that it was "a large sea 

 bass," from "Southern Pacific Avaters." The large 

 example was given to the British Columbia Provin- 

 cial Museum, where a cast will be made and placed 

 on exhibition. Through the kindness of the company 

 manager a smaller specimen caught at the same time 

 was sent to Stanford University in a frozen condition. 

 There it has been carefully examined, and compared 

 with a Japanese specimen, undoubtedly the same 

 species. 



It will be noted that the locality was the same 

 as the corrected one for the first specimen. The prob- 

 ability is that there is an available explanation for the 

 occurrences. In the region indicated, the continental 

 shelf drops with great rapidity to oceanic depths, and 

 a halibut trawl set in 150 fathoms on its shoreward 

 end frequently drops as far as its buoys will allow 

 it on the seaward end. This may be as much as 400 

 fathoms. It has only been in recent years, particular- 

 ly in the winter, that halibut fishing has been carried 

 on in depths of 140 fathoms and more, as has been 

 shown in the reports of the British Columbia Com- 

 missioner of Fisheries for 1915. The cousin of the 

 present species, the Alaska black cod Anoplopoma, 

 inhabits considerable depths also, and in the last few 

 years more of them are being caught by the halibut 

 boats. The fishermen even occasionally bring up 

 Macrouroid species, formerly utterly unknown to 

 them. This "rare" fish, then, has perhaps been 



