Kelly McAllister wrote:

I snagged one herring on my Buzz Bomb while fishing at Point No Point
but I snagged many sandlance. There was a group of four boys about
11 or 12 years old digging up the sandlance and putting them on
small hooks with a few split shot. They cast this rig out and let
the sandlance gimp around a bit. They were reeling in small (12-16 inch
salmon) at a fast pace. Actually, they lost about 5 for each one landed.

I saw one Rhino with its beak loaded with small fish. I am pretty sure
this bird (and others I have seen in past years) had a beak full of
sandlance rather than herring.

These sandlance interest me because they bury themselves in the sand but
can also be seen in large schools that pass by and pass by seemingly
without end. Do you know much about their biology? Do they feed in
the water column and retreat to the sand merely to avoid predation when
they aren't feeding?

This use of the term "candlefish" gets me thinking. How do you get
people to start using a more proper name, one which is recognizable to
people who know fish? They all use "candlefish" for the Pacific sandlance
so the communication between the locals seems to be working fine.

Kelly,

Perhaps the difference in our observations is that you are fishing from shore(?), while I'm
working on a seine boat out past the ACP Aid-To-Navigation in deeper water? Also, the mesh
size of the seine, being selective for fish somewhat above the 4-5 pound range, might very
possibly pick up a few 4-inch herring but pass all the sand lance through the meshes. The
herring that the seine picks up are usually caught in messes of wrack - flotsam of grass,
seaweeds and jellyfish. Usually, the mesh of the seine is selective and passes the small fish -
bait and immature salmon - right on through.

I see lots of sand lance on the beach at my father-in-law's place north of 3-Tree Point, and was
under the impression that they burrow into the sand to lay eggs (kind of like the grunion in
California). But, I read in Hart's "Pacific Fishes of Canada" that :


"The sand lance leads a varied life, sometimes offshore, sometimes in large schools stemming
tidal currents in channels, at others burying themselves more or less completely in beach sand,
and possibly also in deep water. In surface water off the outlet of the Fraser River and in
Saanich Inlet in early summer larvae up to 25 millimeters, postlarvae 25 to 75 millimeters, and
adults are abundant and feeding mainly on copepods, their eggs and nauplii, but also on a wide
variety of other foods.

"Sand lance are frequently taken as food by chinook and coho salmon, lingcod, halibut, fur
seals, and by many other marine invertebrates. It is not regularly used as human food but is
said to be excellent."

Graham Gillespie and S Jergen Westrheim in "Synopsis of information on marine fishes utilized
as prey by marine and shoreline birds of the Queen Charlotte Islands" (pp 36-55, In 'The
ecology, status, and conservation of marine and shoreline birds of the Queen Charlotte Islands'
Occ. Paper Number 93, Can. Wildlife Service, 1997, Kees Vermeer and Ken Morgan eds.) note
the importance of sand lance for numerous birds, mammals and fishes. They note that sand
lance feed actively in daylight, in dense schools - often mixed with Pacific herring. The birds
listed as avain predators of sand lance include Common and Thick-billed Murre, Ancient and
Marbled Murrelets, Oldsquaw, Horned and Tufted Puffins, Sooty Shearwaters, Fork-tailed Storm
Petrels and Arctic Terns.

I could add Brown Pelicans to the list of predators (at least in northern Oregon). Ten years ago,
I was working with Roy Lowe of the USFWS, who was measuring storm-petrel burrow densities
on the Three Arch Rocks. We disturbed a small flock of pelicans from their roost one morning,
and at least one of the birds regurgitated its breakfast of about a pound of sand lance.

Re: the use of "candlefish" by the locals. "Candlefish" is most appropriately a common name for
one of the smelt - Eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus), although people around here seem to use
that name for a number of similarly-appearing 'bait fishes'. Eulachon got the name candlefish
because of its oil content: the native peoples here would dry the fish, then fit the carcass with a
wick and burn the fish as a candle! The 'grease trails' from the inland tribes to the coast were
established as trading routes for the fish oil from this species.

There is little coordination for use of common names for species other than birds. And, other
than birders and biologists, local common names are still in use by a lot of the general public.
Heck, I grew up calling GBHs "shitepokes", dippers "water ousels", towhees "cock robins" and
Varied Thrushes "Alaska Robins" etc., etc. because that's what the "locals" called them.

I believe that the ICUN lists common names for a number of species, but people don't get
fanatical about the common names, the way birders get about common names of our avifauna. I
believe that I've heard a different name for black rockfish (Sebastes melanops) in every port I've
been in from Crescent City to Neah Bay, and *all* of the rockfish suffer under the epithets of
either "sea bass" or "red snapper" on our coast. Don't even get me started on common names
for plants.......

Jon. Anderson
Olympia, Washington
festuca at olywa.net