SEA BREAM IN ESSEX WATERS.
239
Southend Pier, in water about three fathoms deep. The
fish was new to them as others of fishermen at work hard by.
When fresh caught its brilliant silvery scales immediately
attracted attention. According to the men its head and dorsum
were only slightly tinted with pale orange pink, the silvery
hue visibly predominating. Such certainly was the case when
brought to me. Moreover, it was destitute of the black shoulder
patch so specifically characteristic of the full-grown Pagellus
centrodontus.
Extreme length, 91/4 inches. It barely turned the scale at
1/2lb. weight. Greatest depth of body just behind the pectoral
fin 2.9 inches. Eye 4/5ths of an inch in diameter. Sex doubtful.
Food, quite a number of young of the Greater Pipefish
(Sygnathus acus) ranging from 21/4 to 31/4 inches in length; also a
post-larval Butterfish or Gunnell (Centronotus gunnellus)
38 mill. = 11/2 inches long.
This Essex specimen of immature Sea Bream (yearling or
thereabouts) seems to come under what are known by the local
name of "Chad" by the Devon and Cornwall fishermen.
Theirs is an indefinite term for the young bream of various sizes
destitute of the adult's dark-coloured shoulder mark and deep
orange hue of the dorsum. Our estuary example may have been
a straggler from a roving squad ;. for in their immature stages
during the autumn months they crowd in shoals among the
inshore shallows of the above counties, whereas the older bream
are stated to keep to deeper water and more rocky grounds.2
The species in question may be said to have its headquarters
quite within the western area of the English Channel. At times
it is plentiful and exposed for sale in the fish-marts of Plymouth
and Brixham.3 There seems to be a gradual diminishment in
numbers, proceeding eastwards, up channel. For example, on
the Sussex coast,4 they are relatively fewer, and still less so
around Kent, which, indeed, somewhat resembles Essex in
paucity of their visits. On the Suffolk and Norfolk seaboards
they are now seldom caught.5
It was originally intended that the specimen of Thames
Estuary Sea Bream should have been exhibited to the members
2 Wilcocks, The Sea Fisherman, 3rd Ed. (1875), p. 189.
3 Houghton, Commercial Sea Fishes (1884), p. 100.
4 Yarrell, British Fishes, 3rd Ed., Vol. II., p. 147; also Merrifield, Natural History of
Brighton (1869), p. 112.
g Patterson, "Fishes of Great Yarmouth," Zoologist, 1897, p. 544,