882 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OP FISHERIES 



Nantucket westward, and along the eastern half of Long Island, New York, the great 

 majority on the south shore of Marthas Vineyard, at the mouth of Buzzards Bay, 

 and near Block Island. 



This percentage of recoveries is larger than for any considerable section of any 

 one of the other lines along which drift bottles have been put out in the Gulf of 

 Maine, so large, in fact, that representatives only can be shown on the chart (fig. 

 174). With the recoveries condensed in so short a section of the coast line, it is 

 obvious that these bottles came within the grip of a very definite current setting 

 northward and inshore, probably around the shoals. 



The alteration along hne B, from westerly drifts at the inshore end to easterly 

 and westerly both from the next section of 40 miles, and then to westerly again from 

 the mid-section, is clear evidence that the line followed the boundary between the 

 Gulf of Maine eddy and the clockwise drift around the shoals to the west just 

 stated, locating the southern boundary of the former at about latitude 40° 50'. 



This westerly drift certainly involved the water right out to the edge of the 

 continent, because 22 bottles from the outer section of line B (including the outermost 

 of all, set adrift 40 miles out from the 200-meter contour) were picked up between 

 Nantucket Island and Fke Island Beach on Long Island, N. Y. Seventeen of these 

 outer bottles (10 from just inside and 7 from just outside the continental edge) were 

 found on the North Carolina beach, a few miles north of Cape Hatteras,'' after time 

 intervals averaging 85 days (73 to 112 days). The mean distance traveled by this last 

 group of bottles (if they followed a straight line) is about 410 miles — slightly longer by 

 their probable route — giving a minimum rate of nearly 5 miles per day. It is probable, 

 also, that the time intervals between the dates of setting out and recovery correspond 

 very closely to the periods when actually afloat, because the sector of beach on which 

 they stranded is continuously and closely patrolled by the Coast Guard stations. 



Some further light is thrown on the tracks that the bottles of this last group 

 followed on their journey, by recoveries set adrift a few days later along a Hne (C) 

 running southeasterly from New York, 111 of which were picked up between Dela- 

 ware Bay and Cape Hatteras. Most of those that reached the North Carolina 

 coast from the outer part of this line were spaced from a point about 45 mUes from 

 the New Jersey coast out to a poiat some 40 miles beyond the edge of the conti- 

 nent, as marked by the 100-fathom contour. It is therefore fair to assume that 

 the bottles from the Cape Cod line that drifted farthest south likewise passed 

 Delaware Bay within a few miles (one way or the other) of the continental edge, 

 where they would have intersected the New York line. 



The fact that so many of the other bottles from the same outer section of the 

 Cape Cod line drifted inshore, to strand along southern New England, makes it likely 

 that this whole group of bottles set northwestward, in over the outer part of the 

 continental edge at first, and then separated, some veering to the westward and 

 southwestward along the outer part of the shelf, others turning northward toward 

 the coast. There must also have been a rather direct drift of surface water in that 

 direction from the ofEng of Nantucket Shoals, and so in toward the land, at the 

 time, for if the bottles that traveled that route had gone far west before turning 



" Scattered from False Cape to a point 9 miles north of Hatteras Light. 



