DEVELOPMENT AND LIFE HISTORY OF SOME TELEOSTS 
525 
The smallest fry collected, ranging from 5.0 to 10 mm in length, were nearly all 
taken with 1-meter tow nets, and mostly at the surface. Young ranging upward of 
10 mm in length enter the sounds and bays and estuaries freely, though some remain 
in the open outside waters until a length of about 20 mm or more is attained. After 
the fish enter the inshore waters they tend to settle more or less on the bottom. 
Many of the young after entering the inshore waters occupy areas overgrown 
with eelgrass or other bottom growths, a habitat also occupied by their relatives, 
the young sheepshead. 
It is interesting that the fish occupying the weedy areas become pigmented 
much earlier than those remaining in open water. In the description of young 18 
to 20 mm in length it is shown that some specimens are well pigmented at a length 
of 18 mm and a few at even a smaller size, whereas others still are virtually unpig- 
men ted when 20 mm long. It is shown, also, that a pronounced deepening of the 
body occurs simultaneously. In every instance the specimens acquiring pigmenta- 
tion, as well as the deeper body early, were collected in weedy areas, whereas the 
large (up to 20 mm in length) unpigmented ones were taken in open water. 
During the winter (December to February) young ranging from about 12 to 
16 mm in length are often numerous in the deeper channels, in the sounds and estuaries, 
in company with young croakers and spots of about the same size. At this season of 
the year large schools of young pinfish, and spots, were frequently seen in quiet coves 
of the breakwater and jetties along the eastern shore of Pivers Island. When winter 
is over young pinfish are not abundant in the deeper channels, as they then chiefly 
occupy the shallow weeded aieas; and they are seen also around piers, breakwaters, 
jetties, wrecks, etc., where presumably they find the food they need, which seems to 
be virtually identical with that of the sheepshead (see p. 532). 
