MIGRATIONS OF COD 
25 
4. For the first time in a generation good catches of cod were made inside 
Chesapeake Bay, among which one tagged Nantucket cod was reported. 
What brought these cod inside Sandy Hook, Great, Delaware, and Chesapeake 
Bays the winter of 1927-28 can not be known definitely, but it is not at all unlikely 
that a search for food, together with an unusually large number of fish may have 
played an important part. It may be significant that large numbers of sand eels 
were present in Delaware Bay that winter and that the stomachs of the cod caught 
there were full of them. But if the sand eel drew cod inside Delaware Bay then, 
the same can not be said for the winter 1928-29, or at least was not noted by the 
fishermen. During the winter of 1928-29 stomachs examined off Cape May showed 
that, quantitatively, crabs were the chief food of the cod. They also fed on mollusks 
(mostly Lunatia heros), worms, shrimps, and small fishes. Among the latter were 
small hake (Urophycis), small sculpins (Myoxocephalus), sand eels (Ammodytes), and 
even pipefish (Siphostoma) and seahorses (Hippocampus). The cod caught in the 
Chesapeake during early March, 1930, had been feeding on herring (Pomolobus). 
COD TAGGED IN THE WOODS HOLE REGION 
The few cod marked off No Mans Land and the recaptures made therefrom 
are of especial interest because they were tagged in almost the same place where 
Smith (1902) released all of his tagged cod. The following recapture records of our 
fish have been received (Table 14): 
Table 14. — Recapture records of cod tagged l to 3 miles off No Mans Land by the “Halcyon” 
Tagged 
Recaptured 
Number 
Date 
Date 
Locality 
92 
Apr. 21 to May 2, 1923 
June 1,1923 
Aug. 24,1923 
Oct. 17, 1925 
Feb. 8, 1926 
Oct. 28,1926 
No data. 
South Channel. 
No Mans Land. 
Off Block Island. 
No Mans Land. 
33 .. 
Oct. 28, 1925 
These recaptures, taken by themselves, are too few upon which to base sound 
conclusions regarding the migrations of the cod in this region, but, fortunately, other 
records were obtained from subsequent tagging experiments. 
None of the 125 cod tagged off No Mans Land was taken west of Rhode Island, 
but this can not be considered unusual, because only 8 of Smith’s cod, or about 
1 out of each 500 tagged, were reported from as far as New Jersey, and nearly all of 
his western recaptures were made within about 70 miles of the place were the fish 
were released. 
Further tagging in this general region consisted of 946 cod marked January 6 
and 7, 1926; 422 on January 3, 1927; and 491 on January 13, 1928. Most of these 
fish were caught in pound nets set near the mouth of Buzzards Bay and were brought 
to the Bureau of Fisheries biological station at Woods Hole, where they were held in 
an inclosure so that their spawn could be collected and incubated in the hatchery. 
After being tagged, they were released directly from the dock at Woods Hole. The 
recapture records of these fish are given in Table 15. 
