PUBLIC DOCUMENT No. 25. 29 



Shore Fisheries. 



The returns of the shore net and pound fisheries are made 

 annually, under section 119 of the Revised Laws. Upon appli- 

 cation the commissioners provided fishermen with suitable blank 

 forms for these reports. All information is held confidential, 

 the only purpose of the act being the collection of correct data 

 upon the shore fisheries. Unfortunately, all Massachusetts 

 fishermen have not seen fit to comply with the law by making 

 applications for the blanks and submitting the proper returns. 

 Nevertheless, in spite of their incompleteness, the statistics are 

 valuable for a comparative study of the fisheries, as approxi- 

 mately the same number of men from the coast towns have 

 made returns each year. The following table gives the rela- 

 tive abundance of the different species of fish and the statistics 

 of the shore fisheries of Massachusetts for the past ten years: - 



