Craddock et al.: Food habits of Lagenorhynchus acutus off the coast of New England 
385 
Georges Bank 
Kilometers 
71 °W 
70° W 
69° W 
68° W 
43° N 
43° N 
42° N 
42° N 
41°N 
41°N 
72° W 
44° N 
44° N 
40° N 
40° N 
72° W 
71°W 
70° W 
69° W 
68° W 
67° W 
67° W 
Maine 
Gulf of Maine 
T> m 
New Hampshire 
Massachusetts 
50 m 
100 m 
200 m 
1000 m 
Figure 1 
Occurrences from 1991 to 2006 of 62 Atlantic white-sided dolphins ( Lagenorhynchus acutus ) 
collected in the Gulf of Maine and south of Georges Bank and examined for stomach contents 
in this study. Circles are locations of net-caught dolphins; triangles are locations of stranded 
dolphins. 
group was observed circling and feeding on a school of 
sand lance (Weinrich et al., 2001). 
Materials and methods 
This study records stomach contents from 28 inciden- 
tally caught and 34 stranded L. acutus from the Gulf of 
Maine population off the coast of New England (Fig. 1). 
The animals examined were collected between 1991 
and 2006, most of them from 2004-5. The incidentally 
caught (hereafter referred to as net-caught) animals 
were taken either by otter trawl (22 stomachs) or by 
sink gillnet (six stomachs). Of these, 26 were from the 
Gulf of Maine, one was from deep water (500 m) on the 
continental slope south of Georges Bank near Munsen 
Canyon, and one was from the continental shelf south 
of Narragansett Bay. Thirty-four stomachs were from 
strandings: 33 from outer Cape Cod, Barnstable County, 
MA, and one from Naushon, Elizabeth Islands, Dukes 
County, MA (Table 1). 
We have examined every available stomach of net- 
caught L. acutus. All were taken in the U.S. commercial 
fishery and sampled aboard ship by fisheries observ- 
ers of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), 
Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC, Woods 
Hole, MA), Northeast Fisheries Observer Program (NE- 
FOP). NEFOP is the permitting and monitoring agency 
of the commercial fishing fleet in compliance with the 
Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) and the U.S. 
Endangered Species Act (ESA). 
Stranded animals were obtained by volunteers of 
the Cape Cod Stranding Network, currently known as 
International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), Yar- 
mouth, MA. Most of the stomachs were initially frozen 
and curated by the NEFSC. 
Contents from stomachs determined to be intact (reli- 
able) were examined for frequency, relative abundance, 
