Striped bass

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Onglets

Description

Distinguishing features

The striped bass has an elongated body, a large mouth and a forked tail. It varies in colour from dark olive green to steel blue or even black. Its silvery flanks are marked with seven or eight dark lateral stripes. Its first dorsal fin and its anal fin bear spines.

Reproduction

These fish spawn in fresh water. In Canada, they spawn in late spring, after migrating from salt water to fresh water the previous fall.

Depending on its size, the female lays from 180,000 to 700,000 eggs.

Diet

The larvae eat zooplankton and the young feed on crustaceans, worms and insects. The adults mostly eat fish, including herring, tomcod, smelt, young gaspereau, shad and flounder. They sometimes eat crustaceans, sea worms, insects and plants.

Predators

The adults have few predators. The young are eaten by various species of fish. Striped bass are fished commercially and for sport.

Habitat

This coastal species lives in salt water in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and along the east coast of the United States. Striped bass spend several months a year in fresh water, because they spawn in rivers.

Ecology, behaviour

Pollution, destruction of their spawning grounds, overfishing and declining populations of some of the fish on which they feed all contributed to the disappearance of striped bass from the St. Lawrence River.

French name

Bar rayé

Scientific name

Morone saxatilis

Phylum

Chordata

Class

Osteichthyes (bony fish)

Order

Perciformes

Family

Moronidae

Size

Average length: 40 to 45 cm

Weight

2 to 5 kg; maximum: 14 kg

Life span

20 years

Status

Estuary population Threatened (Cosewic - 2004); not monitered/ disapeared (MDDEP).

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