70 
BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
a few of the cod tagged in summer on Nantucket Shoals have been recaptured there 
in winter, and many marked fish retaken almost on the same spot the year fol- 
lowing strengthen the suspicion that such cod did not migrate to Rhode Island 
or westward over the winter. 
Although spawning apparently does not prompt this westward migration, 
neither did it deter it, because cod are known to spawn all along the migratory 
route, at least as far as southern New Jersey, as appears from the following lines of 
evidence : 
Off eastern Long Island Fred P. Bradford states that cod with spawn are taken 
throughout the winter and a few even as late as the first week in April. 
On the Cholera Bank, off western Long Island, N. Y., out of 166 fish the Alba- 
tross II caught 34 males and 6 females from November 14 to 21, 1927, so ripe that 
the milt or eggs flowed from the vent when the fish were laid on the measuring 
board. Again, from November 8 to 24, 1928, there were 28 ripe males and 2 ripe 
females among the 134 cod that were caught. 
For the region off southern New Jersey, Smith (1902, p. 208) records nearly 
ripe cod off Atlantic City. On the present investigation fishermen in southern 
New Jersey reported that each winter many cod were taken “with large milts and 
roes.” The majority of these spawning cod are taken in November and December, 
while a few are found throughout the winter, and a small run occurs in late March 
and early April, at the end of the season. During our tagging operations 13 ripe 
males and 1 female were noted among 93 cod caught off Atlantic City December 
12 to 19, 1928, and 5 ripe males were among 133 cod caught there in March and 
April, 1928. No record was kept by the fishermen who tagged cod for us off Cape 
May the winter of 1928-29, but they reported that ripe fish were caught from time 
to time. 
During March and April, 1929, and in May, 1927, O. E. Sette reports that 
the Albatross II caught cod larva? to as far south as the region between Delaware 
Bay and North Carolina, and others were caught in this region on cruises made in 
February, March, and April, 1930. 
Although in some years almost all the cod taken to the west of Rhode Island 
are adult (over about 20 inches long), sometimes, as in the fall of 1926, many fish 
as small as 16 inches are caught. The Albatross II on a chance otter-trawl haul 
made February 28, 1929, off northern New Jersey caught 6 cod winch were of the 
following total lengths: 14, 15%, 16, 17%, and 23% inches. Some of these were 
males and some females. All were immature, except the largest one. The pres- 
ence, at times, of these immature cod west of Rhode Island offers further evidence 
that this is not fundamentally a spawning migration, even though cod may spawn 
off New Jersey just as freely as on Nantucket Shoals. 
Food . — The same foods that are the staple diet of the cod on Nantucket Shoals — 
largely crabs (Cancer, Hyas, Libinia), shrimps, worms, small bottom fishes, etc. — 
are plentiful on all suitable bottoms along the western migratory route. 
Crabs, which form the bulk of the cod’s food off southern Massachusetts, are 
present there throughout the year, so it is not because of the seasonal scarcity of them 
that cod go west. In the New York-New Jersey region rock crabs (Cancer) are 
plentiful the year around; thus, the return from New Jersey back to Nantucket 
Shoals in the spring is not induced by a local exhaustion of this food. It is obvious 
that other bottom forms such as worms, small mollusks, shrimps, etc., can have 
