EXPERIMENTS IN TAGGING COD. 199 
(3) Shortly or immediately after their release, there was a well- 
marked southerly and westerly movement to the shores of New York 
and New Jersey, where they remained during the first four months of 
the year. 
A feature of the fishing season of 1900-1901 was the taking of tagged 
fish farther south than in any of the other years, in the vicinity of 
Atlantic City, which is about the southern limit of the cod fishery. 
On January 31, 1901, Capt. D. C. Clark wrote: 
When fishing for cod about 12 miles south of Absecon Light, abreast of Atlantic 
City, yesterday, we discovered, while gutting fish, a cod with tag V 75. It weighed 
about 4 pounds and was in poor condition. It had no spawn in it, and looked as if it 
had been spawned out some time. We caught it in about 103 fathoms of water, about 
10 miles offshore, with 300 or 400 other fish. There have been thousands of cod 
caught here this fall and winter, but this is the first one with a tag that has been taken. 
On March 15, April 12, and April 15 Captain Clark caught cod 
bearing tags, and two other tagged fish were taken in the same locality 
by other fishermen about March 1. 
(4) During March, April, and May the fish sought Narragansett 
Bay and the shores of Rhode Island, where a few were also found in 
January, February, June, November, and December. 
(5) The largest number of fish were caught off Nantucket, on Nan- 
tucket Shoals, in April and May; in this region a few were also taken 
in March and the summer months. In October and November, how- 
ever—the months when the fish were first caught on these grounds— 
only one of the tagged fish has as yet been taken, notwithstanding 
active fishing at that season by the commercial fishermen. The Fish 
Commission schooner Grampus, which during the years in question 
has caught from 4,000 to 6,000 cod annually on the Nantucket Shoals 
in October and November, has never taken a tagged fish. 
This circumstance suggests (1) that the fish which frequent the Nan- 
tucket Shoals in the spring and summer months represent a different 
body or run from those caught in the same locality in fall, and (2) that 
the tagged fish which have frequented the shoals leave on the approach 
of the time when they were first taken and go to grounds at present 
unknown—perhaps to New York and New Jersey. 
(6) The fish showed but a slight tendency to go to the eastward of 
Cape Cod or of Nantucket Shoals. A few were taken between May 
and August, southeast of Chatham, but only one was reported from 
South Channel and one from Georges Bank. The latter (No. 889) was 
caught by a Gloucester fishing schooner on March 27, 1899, at a depth 
of 33 fathoms. 
(7) None of the tagged fish has been taken north of Cape Cod. If 
the schools with which the tagged fish mingled on Nantucket Shoals 
and elsewhere behaved as did the tagged fish, it is evident that the cod 
inhabiting the grounds off southern New England, New York, and New 
Jersey belong to a distinct body, and are not simply a part of the vast 
shoals found in Massachusetts Bay and on the coast of Maine. 
