PA.HT XI. 



THE POUND-NET FISHERIES OF THE ATLANTIC STATES. 



BY FREDERICK W. TRUE. 

 1. IMPORTANCE AND LOCATION OF THE FISHERIES. 



The pound-net fishery is an important one, both in view of the great quantities of fish taken 

 and on account of the powerful influence it is supposed to exert in reducing the supply of shore- 

 haunting species. Few forms of fishery apparatus are more effective in gathering in all kinds of 

 fish, both large and small, whether swimming at the surface or along the bottom, than the great 

 pound-nets of Massachusetts. Hook-and-line fisheries, and even the majority of seine fisheries, do 

 not compare with the pound fisheries in the magnitude of their results. Again, while most forms 

 of apparatus imply very considerable skill in the fisherman, the pound-net requires none. It oper- 

 ates by certain constant peculiarities of tides and fishes, which remain in force whether the fisher- 

 man be awake or asleep. 



The distribution of pound-net fisheries along the sea-shore, as well as of the varieties of appa- 

 ratus used, is modified largely by the configuration of the coast. Where it presents high cliffs 

 looking directly seaward, the deep waters at whose base are lashed to foam in every storm, we 

 shall look in vain for pound nets. It would be folly to set them in such places. Those most stoutly 

 built can scarcely withstand the violence of the open sea even on a sandy and gradually sloping 

 shore. All other things being equal, the more sheltered a situation is the more suitable it is for 

 the erection of these nets. For this reason we find them grouped together in bays and inlets and 

 in the mouths of rivers. It is not to be supposed, however, that a soft, sandy, or muddy bottom 

 is necessary for the establishment of nets. The ingenuity of the fishermen is sufficient to enable 

 them to erect pounds on a bottom of solid rock, and in fact those in use in Maine are so built almost 

 without exception. 



The present distribution of pound-net fisheries on our Atlantic coast is in some respects a 

 peculiar one, and will doubtless suffer many changes in coming years. Hundreds of miles of coast, 

 especially southward, have never been appropriated for this fishery, although apparently eminently 

 suitable for it. At present the most important pound-fisheries are those of Cape Cod, Massachu- 

 setts, and the adjacent islands. Nets are extensively in use both on the northern and southern 

 shores of the cape, but, as I shall presently show, the fisheries of the two regions are quite dis- 

 tinct. Many nets are in use on the north shore of Martha's Vineyard, and a few about Nautucket 

 and the Elizabeth Islands and in Buzzard's Bay. North of Cape Cod we find no pound-nets, if 

 we except the very few employed at Cape Ann, until we reach Portland Bay, on the coast of Maine. 



South of Cape Cod we find fisheries in Narragansett Bay, along the eastern half of the Con- 

 necticut shore, and at the eastern extremity of Long Island. A few nets are in use in New York 



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