PLANKTON OF THE GULF OF MAINE 
287 
Ternora longicornis Miiller 
This copepod is neritic in the sense that its areas of abundance are confined to 
the continental shelves of the continents or large islands and to their close vicinity. 
The vast majority of the records obtained for it have been from one or other side of 
the North Atlantic, 54 none from either the South Atlantic or from any part of the 
Pacific. It enters the Mediterranean to some extent (Thompson and Scott, 1903) 
and has been recorded from the Indian Ocean (van Breemen, 1908). Off the coasts 
of Europe its range as now known is confined between the latitudes of about 35° and 
74° N., and it reaches its maximum development in the English and Irish Channels, 
in the North Sea region generally, whence it extends far up into the Baltic, and along 
the whole southern and western coasts of Norway. Except for a few records between 
northern Europe and Spitzbergen (Farran, 1910), its range seems hardly to encroach 
on the Arctic Seas. It has not been found in the Greenland Sea, but Sars (1903) 
reports it from Iceland. 
On the American side the most southernly station for it is off Chesapeake Bay 
(Bigelow, 1922, p. 146). It is an important member of the coastwise plankton 
from New York eastward, including the Gulf of Maine, the continental shelf all along 
Nova Scotia, along the southerly aspect of the Newfoundland Banks, and in the Gulf 
of St. Lawrence, where the Canadian fisheries expedition collected it at about 70 
per cent of the tow-net stations in 1915, locally in abundance (Willey, 1919). It has 
also been found in the Labrador current off the Straits of Belle Isle and thence east- 
ward to latitude 55° 24', longitude 41° 10', south of Greenland (Herdman, Thompson, 
and Scott, 1898), which is the most northerly station known for it in the western side 
of the North Atlantic. 
Gulf of Maine . — As the chart (fig. 85) shows, T. longicornis is widespread in the 
shoaler parts of the gulf, not only from land out to 10 to 12 miles outside the 100- 
meter contour, from Cape Cod to Cape Sable, but on Browns and Georges Banks as 
well, and across the whole breadth of the continental shelf off Marthas Vineyard and 
Nantucket. It is a creature both of the open sea and of harbors, common in winter 
right up to the dock at Woods Hole (Wheeler, 1901, p. 175), in Portland Harbor 
(Bigelow 1914), and at St. Andrews (from Doctor McMurrich’s unpublished plankton 
lists), but recorded at only 10 to 12 percent of the stations farther out in the deep basin of 
the gulf. Within this neritic area, as bounded above, and between longitudes 65° and 
71° W., it has been recognized at about 41 per cent of all the tow-net stations for which 
the copepods have been determined, irrespective of year, season, or precise locality. 
Its independence of the distance from land, within the bounds of the continental 
shelf, may be further illustrated by the fact that Dr. W. C. Kendall, in his field notes 
(p. 12), mentions “small brown copepods,” which from the context were almost 
certainly Ternora, as plentiful in haul after haul on the northwestern part of Georges 
Bank and over the shelf out from Nantucket in August and September, 1896. 
The neritic nature of Ternora is further brought out by its quantitative dis- 
tribution, for only three of the 20-odd stations where we have taken a greater number 
of specimens per square meter than the average for the respective month and year 
54 Sars (1903) and Farran (1910) have summarized its distribution; the reader is referred to them for more detailed information 
