PISHES OF CHESAPEAKE BAY 
11 
Chesapeake Bay and tributary streams are scattered through the numerous reports 
of the United States Fish Commission and those of the fish commissions of Mary- 
land and Virginia. Finally, various fishes from Chesapeake Bay are mentioned in an 
array of miscellaneous papers. Some of these are short and deal with a single fish, 
others are of a general nature, and one or more Chesapeake fishes are mentioned 
more or less incidentally. References to such publications occur in appropriate 
places in the text, and the complete titles are included in the bibliography. 
GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE FAUNA 
The fishes of Chesapeake Bay are not of a peculiar or distinctive type. It will 
be seen from the following table that of the 202 species described the great majority 
range both north and south of Chesapeake Bay. Present information indicates that 
the bay is the stopping point for 27 species of southern distribution, whereas only 
12 species of northern distribution reach their southernmost range in Chesapeake 
Bay. One species, recently described, and four new species described in the present 
work, so far as known to date, are the only ones peculiar to Chesapeake Bay. We 
have included 44 species that do not appear to have been recorded previously from 
Chesapeake Bay. Other species undoubtedly will be taken, probably as stragglers, 
from time to time, as not a few coastwise species range both north and south of the 
entrance to Chesapeake Bay but have not been observed to date within the bay 
by a naturalist. Such species, of course, may stray past the capes and into the bay 
at almost any time. 
The anadromous species, chief among which are the shad, alewives, and the 
striped bass, are especially numerous, and they constitute a very important part 
of the products of the fisheries of Chesapeake Bay. They are particularly important 
in that section of the bay lying within the State of Maryland, as many of the more 
strictly salt-water species common in the southern sections of the bay do not reach 
the Maryland waters in large numbers. 
