94 
BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
Year 1925.— A total of 6,389 cod was tagged on the same grounds north of Cape 
Cod as in 1924, of which 918 were subsequently reported recaptured. Of these 1 
Stellwagen cod was taken off Atlantic, City N. J., and there is a somewhat doubtful 
record of a Mount Desert fish taken off Race Point, Cape Cod. In addition, Mount 
Desert cod were taken, 1 each at Matinicus, Portland Lightship, and Ipswich Bay. 
Year 1926 . — Tagging was restricted somewhat this year, and the number of 
cod tagged other than on Nantucket Shoals amounted to 1,016 on Georges Bank 
and 945 off Mount Desert. The subsequent recaptures numbered 169 and included 
1 Georges Bank cod, which was taken off Rhode Island, and 1 Mount Desert fish, 
which was caught off Matinicus, Me. 
Year 1927 . — A total of 3,190 cod was tagged in the following localities: Georges 
Bank, Browns Bank, Cashes Ledge, Jeffreys Ledge, Platts Bank, Stellwagen Bank, 
and off Mount Desert. The recaptures reported numbered 298, of which 2 came from 
South Channel. In addition, a Browns Bank cod was taken off Magnolia, Mass., 
and a Platts Bank cod was taken off Plymouth, Mass. 
Year 1928 .— During this year 1,285 cod were tagged in the Gulf of Maine, north 
and east of Nantucket Shoals and South Channel; and from these 33 recaptures were 
reported, of which 4 were taken along the route to Nantucket Shoals. Two of these 
were cod from the northeastern part of Georges Bank, 1 of which was taken on the 
southwestern part of the bank and 1 on Nantucket Shoals. One cod migrated from 
Cape Sable, Nova Scotia, to the Chatham grounds, while another migrated from 
Stellwagen Bank to Rhode Island. 
This summary shows that only 29 tagged cod out of 1,817 recaptures reported 
from 15,981, marked on grounds other than Nantucket Shoals and Chatham, from 
1923 to 1928, showed a tendency to migrate toward Nantucket Shoals. Of these 
29 only 19 cod, or about 1 per cent of the total recaptures, were taken in the Nan- 
tucket-Chatham-South Channel region proper and on the wintering grounds to the 
westward. This result, taken by itself, would seem to indicate that no important 
migration to Nantucket Shoals occurred from any of the grounds where we have 
tagged a large number of fish to the north and east throughout the six years of this 
experiment. However, if the region north and east of Massachusetts be taken by 
sections the dispersals made by these fish take on added interest. 
Only 5 cod out of about 10,000 that were tagged along shore between Cape Eliz- 
abeth and Mount Desert, Me., were recaptured along a route to southern Massa- 
chusetts. This region, therefore, is not a likely source of the young adult cod which 
appear on Nantucket Shoals from time to time. Although the coast of Maine appears 
to play an unimportant role with regard to supplying Nantucket Shoals with adult 
cod, we must not lose sight of the fact that the shore waters there form one of the 
greatest nurseries for young cod along our coast, and that most of the 10,000 fish 
which were tagged off Mount Desert were younger (3 years old or less) than the cod 
tagged elsewhere in the Gulf of Maine. It may be that as these fish grow older, 
reaching upward of 4 years of age and move out into deeper water, that many of them 
may find their way into the southern Massachusetts region, probably by way of the 
offshore banks. Direct evidence of this from marked fish is lacking, because nearly 
all these fish would have lost their tags during the long period elapsing before their 
meanderings could bring them to the Nantucket region. 
A small proportion of the cod living on Platts Bank and Cashes Ledge, and 
probably in their general vicinity, emigrate toward southern Massachusetts, for 6 
