882 
BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF 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 line 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 Fire 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, 69 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 line (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 miles from 
the New Jersey coast out to a point 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 offing 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 
6 * Scattered from False Cape to a point 9 miles north of Hatteras Light. 
