COD-FISHERIES OF CAPE ANN. 705 



2.— CHAEACTEEISTICS OP THE COD. 



Cod-fisli are gregarious iu their habits, going in schools of greater or 

 less size, and are governed in their movements by the presence or ab- 

 sence of food, the spawning instinct, and the temperature of the water. 

 "When migrating, the schools are quite dense, though by no means like 

 schools of menhaden or mackerel. But when they reach the feeding 

 gTOund they seem to distribute themselves over a large area, though 

 more or less grouped together in little bunches. This is particularly 

 noticeable on the shore, when the fish are moving about in search of 

 food, and the fisherman soon catches up all that chance to be on one 

 patch of rocks, and must then row to another in order to find a new 

 supply. The same thing is seen on western banks, where a vessel 

 usually carries dories to distribute her crew over different parts of the 

 ground, and often, by setting her trawls in one locality for a day or two, 

 seems to catch up all of the fish, and must then " shift her berth." Fish- 

 ermen also cite many instances where the fishing is excellent on a few,, 

 particular, well-defined spots on different parts of the ground, while 

 almost no fish can be taken in other places. 



During the spawning season this tendency to become scattered is less 

 noticeable, for the instincts of the fish seem to bring them uearer 

 together, and great numbers are often taken in one particular locality. 

 Even here, however, the tendency to separate into groups occurs, for 

 some boats find good fishing while others, but a few rods away, catch 

 almost nothing; and in trawling, some parts of the line have a fish on 

 nearly every hook, while other parts take only a scattering one. 



In schooling, both sexes are always found together, whether it be on 

 the spawning or feeding ground or on the journey; but the relative 

 numbers of each seem to vary greatly, and we have been able to dis- 

 cover no invariable rule whereby one can predict with certainty the sex 

 that will first appear, or that which will be most abundant at any given 

 time during the season. The fishermen have a commonly accepted tra- 

 dition that in the spawning schools the females always come first and 

 the males later, but this theory is not supported by facts. Observations 

 were frequently made on the relative numbers of the two sexes landed 

 by the shore-fishermen between September, 1878, and July, 1879. The 

 results showed that during the early fall, or before the school-fish had 

 made their appearance, the fish were nearly equally divided between 

 males and females — first the one and then the other being more abundant. 

 When the school-fish first reached the shore early in November the males 

 were a trifle more plenty than the females for about a week, but from 

 that date until they left the grounds the females were taken in gTcater 

 numbers, sometimes in the proportion of two to one, and at others in 

 nearly equal quantities. In the Ipswich Baj'^ school during the first two 

 or three days in February there were ten males to one female; by the 

 middle of the month the females composed about 40 per cent, of the 

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