PLANKTON OF THE GULF OF MAINE 
135 
mer, for this shrimp was plentifully represented in that region on March 22 (station 
20081) in hauls from 40 and from 200 meters, while the haul from 100 meters 
yielded about 50 on April 12 (station 20100), although the zooplankton as a whole 
was decidedly scanty on that occasion. I hesitate to extend this generalization 
to the winter, however, because only a few euphausiids were taken there on January 
5, 1921 (station 10502). 
Euphausiids 71 are often extremely plentiful near the surface in the Eastport-St. 
Andrews region at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy, where the smaller-sized herring 
can be seen chasing them to and fro right up to the docks (p. 102), and they are so 
conspicuous when schooling that they must have been seen and commented upon 
by local fishermen from the first settlement of that coast. The earliest published 
reference to their local abundance there, or in any part of the gulf, for that matter, seems 
to have been in 1879, when S. I. Smith (1879, p. 90) described Meganyctiphanes norvegica 
as occurring at the surface in the Eastport region in “swarms, filling the water for 
miles,” and as “usually accompanied by schools of mackerel, young pollock, and 
other fish, and in autumn by immense flocks of gulls, the fish and smaller gulls appear- 
ing to feed almost exclusively on Thysanopoda at such times.” Such occasions he 
recorded for April, August, September, and October, adding that Verrill found these 
shrimp swarming in myriads in the ripplings in the center of the Bay of Fundy in 
1869, and that they are often so abundant among the wharves at Eastport that they 
may be caught there by the quart. Moore also wrote (1898, p. 401) that “during 
the summer and fall dense bodies of Thysanopoda are seen swimming about the 
wharves at Eastport and at other places in the vicinity, and they are also extremely 
abundant on the ripplings at Grand Manan, which has long been famous as a herring 
fishery. Excepting the eyes and the phosphorescent spots beneath, which are 
bright red, the bodies of these shrimps are almost transparent, yet such is the 
density of the schools in which they congregate that a distinct reddish tinge is often 
imparted to the water. In the summer and early fall of 1895 they were especially 
abundant about the wharves at Eastport, and on one occasion, at least, they were 
left at low water several inches deep over a considerable area of one of the docks.” 
Moore believed that Thysanoessa inermis was the species chiefly concerned, but 
in the light of subsequent observations it is probable that then, as now, it was 
outnumbered there by Meganyctiphanes. Our own observations, with information 
communicated by Doctor Huntsman, show that the passage of time has seen no 
diminution in the abundance of the latter in the Eastport-St. Andrews region in 
summer and early autumn. 
It is only in the extreme northeast corner of the gulf, perhaps east of Machias, 
that euphausiids appear regularly in estuarine situations; farther west and south 
the group, as a whole, are creatures of the open sea. 
Tliysanoessa inermis (Krpyer ) 72 
Thysanoessa inermis, as I have stated elsewhere (Bigelow, 1917, p. 283), occurs 
more regularly over the gulf as a whole than any other euphausiid, though it is not 
the most abundant locally. In July and August, as exemplified by the summers of 
71 Chiefly Meganyctiphanes, but Thysanoessa as well, according to Smith (1879), Moore (1898), and our own observations. 
72 1 follow Hansen (1911) in including under this name both Th. neglecta and fihoda inermis, which, as he has shown are 
merely varieties of the one species. 
