. Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission. Fisheries -- United States; Fish-culture -- United States. FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 349 THE REMORAS. FAMILY The several remoras are easily distinguished from all other fishes by the fact that the spiny part of the dorsal fin is modified into a flat oval sucking plate com- posed of a double series of cartilaginous crossplates with serrated free edges situated on the top of the head and neck. All remoras, too, are slender of form with the lower jaw projecting far beyond the upper. Their large mouths are armed with many small pointe
. Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission. Fisheries -- United States; Fish-culture -- United States. FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 349 THE REMORAS. FAMILY The several remoras are easily distinguished from all other fishes by the fact that the spiny part of the dorsal fin is modified into a flat oval sucking plate com- posed of a double series of cartilaginous crossplates with serrated free edges situated on the top of the head and neck. All remoras, too, are slender of form with the lower jaw projecting far beyond the upper. Their large mouths are armed with many small pointed teeth, their soft dorsal and anal fins similar in form and size and one above the other, and their pectorals set high up on the sides. The lower surface of the head is convex, the upper flat—just the reverse of the usual rule—with the lower surface of the body as deeply colored as the upper, the back often being mis- taken for the belly. The members of this family all attach themselves to other fishes or to sea turtles by their sucking disk, usually clinging to the sides of the hosts but often within the mouth or gill cavities of the larger sharks and giant Thus they are carried about, and they feed on the scraps of the meals of their trans- porters. All remoras are tropical, and they appear only as strays in boreal seas, usually fast to sharks or swordfish. We follow Sumner, Osborne, and Cole (1913, p. 766) in uniting under one species the shark sucker (naucrates), with more than 21 plates but a sucking disk less than one-fourth as long as the body, and the pilot sucker {naucrateoides), with only 20 or 21 plates but longer sucker—fishes that are otherwise indistinguishable, one from the Fig. 172.—Shark sucker (Echeneis naucrates) KEY TO GULF OF MAINE REMORAS 1. Pectoral fins pointed; ventrals attached to the belly for less than one-third their length Shark sucker, p. 349 Pectorals rounded; ventrals attached to the belly for more than half their length
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