Observations on the Use of the Sucking-Fish or Remora, Echeneis naucrates, for Catching Turtles in Cuban and Colombian Waters

IN reading several interesting papers of Dr. E. W. Gudger (1919), that indefatigable research worker in the bibliography of ichthyology, my attention was arrested by the title and contents of a brochure On the Use of the Sucking-fish for Catching Fish and Turtles. In some fifty pages and with less than a dozen illustrations he has skillfully demonstrated and proven the story of the use man found for the sucking-fish. He states that the custom of using the remora for fishing was first observed by Columbus (.1494) on his second voyage to America, in an island group of the West Indies called the Jardinellas de la Reina. In conversation with Dr. Gudger I told him of similar observations by myself and others in Cuban waters, and of those of my father, Dr. Solomon De Sola, off the north coast of Colombia. At Dr. Gudger's instigation I relate these experiences, offer some extensions to his paper and comment on the writings of other authors who have treated upon this subject of remora fishing.