92 
BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
found. This is illustrated by the following list of the smallest cod which we caught 
on Nantucket Shoals with hook and line: 
Table 34 . — The total catch of cod less than 16 inches long taken by the “Halcyon” and “ Albatross II” 
on Nantucket Shoals from 1923 to 1928 with hook and line 
Date 
Cod 
caught 
Number below 16 inches 1 
Date 
Cod 
caught 
Number below 16 inches 1 
11 inches 
1 12 inches 
13 inches 
14 inches 
15 inches 
Total 
11 inches 
12 inches 
13 inches 
14 inches 
15 inches 
Total 
1923: 
1926: 
336 
1 
1 
1,878 
2 
17 
19 
411 
1927: 
1, 144 
2 
2 
May 2 
1, 252 
1, 790 
June 2 
1, 701 
2 
2 
1,352 
September 
1, 468 
1 
2 
1 
2 
6 
2, 521 
October. _ ... ___ 
1,291 
2 
2 
1924: 
1928: 
July ... 
1, 254 
July 
748 
5 
7 
12 
'964 
2 
2 
304 
1 
1 
16 
13 
31 
884 
4 
12 
18 
34 
1925: 
Total 
23, 440 
2 
ii 
25 
93 
132 
263 
852 
3 
7 
10 
671 
1 
1 
3 
5 
August 
1,291 
2 
3 
9 
15 
16 
45 
October 
1,328 
9 
36 
47 
92 
1 None were caught under 11 inches. 
2 In addition there were caught on the Chatham grounds 460 cod, which included one 14 and one 15 inch fish. 
The question naturally arises as to what extent selectiveness of the hook-and-line 
gear is responsible for the very small proportion of cod below 16 inches that was 
taken, for we found fish so small to be scarce not only on Nantucket Shoals but in 
all our catches made on the offshore banks as well. Alongshore the results have 
been much different, for there we have caught large numbers of cod 12 to 15 inches 
long with the same sort of hooks as was used in the Nantucket region. For example 
in the shore waters off Mount Desert, Me., where we caught 9,894 cod from 1924 to 
1928, a total of 38 per cent of the cod (compared with 1 per cent for Nantucket 
Shoals, was less than 16 inches long, divided according to size, as follows: 10 inches, 
5; 11 inches, 76; 12 inches, 416; 13 inches, 959; 14 inches, 1,163; and 15 inches, 1,139 
fish. 
The scarcity of these small cod in our catches on Nantucket Shoals and other 
offshore grounds might be due, to a small extent, to the aggressiveness of the large 
fish in seizing the bait, but this possibility fails to explain the vast difference in the 
percentage of young fish taken in the shore waters as compared with the offshore. 
It will be of great importance to know with certainty what now seems a proba- 
bility, namely, whether the large numbers of cod fry scattered over our offshore banks 
are almost completely wiped out by the depredations of larger fish, for if this be so 
our stock of adults must be drawn largely from the nurseries alongshore such as that 
along the coast of Maine. More sampling must be done with nets as well as with 
various sizes of hooks before we can hope to answer this question. Observations along 
this line were made in September, 1929, when I observed the. catches in 40 hauls 
made by a commercial otter trawler on the northeastern part of Georges Bank. 
Although the bunt of the net used was of a mesh fine enough (1 inch square) to retain 
cod at least as small as 10 inches in length, only a few hundred (fig. 28) were small 
enough to fit in the 10 to 15 inch class. (The catch of cod consisted of several thousand 
fish, nearly all of them between 18 to 45 inches long.) 
