PEARCY: ALBACORE OCEANOGRAPHY 



Oregon, it improved off southern California 

 to its best level in about 3 years. For this 

 reason the west coast jig fleet largely emi- 

 grated to California waters in August after 

 the early collapse of the Oregon fishery. 



Similar trends in the catches by both bait 

 and jig boats existed between mid-July and 

 early August. Peaks in catches occurred on 

 26-29 July and 1-2 August, followed by a 

 common decline to very low catches on 4 

 August (Figure 1). 



In contrast to these trends early in the 

 season, bait boats often had excellent fishing 

 after July, while jig fishing was i)oor or non- 

 existent. Average daily catches of bait boats 

 remained below 320 fish per day until mid- 

 August, followed by catches that often ex- 

 ceeded 500 fish per boat day from mid- August 

 to early October. The large daily fluctuations 

 in the catches are due in part to the small 

 number of boats reporting. 



Statistics for landings of albacore in 1970, 

 provided by Hreha (unpublished data, Fish 

 Commission of Oregon), are shown in Table 

 1. Jig boat landings were largest in July, the 



' Totals for jig boats include minor landings for 

 November and December. 



month of highest catches as shown in Figure 

 1, and progressively declined during subse- 

 quent months. According to Hreha (unpub- 

 lished) about one-half of the albacore landed 

 in Augu.st were caught in July by jig boats, 

 and about one-half the total catch of both jig 

 and bait boats for the 1970 season was actually 

 caught in July. This seasonal distribution of 

 Oregon landings in 1970 is unusual compared 

 with other years. August is commonly the 



month when most albacore are landed in Ore- 

 gon. Since 1961. Augu.st ranked first during 

 7 years and September ranked fir.st during 2 

 years. July, the best month in 1970, had not 

 ranked first in landing during the preceding 

 20 years (Ayers and Meehan, 1963; Meehan 

 and Hreha. 1969). 



Table 1 also reveals the importance of the 

 large jig fleet in the Oregon albacore fishing. 

 Total landings by jig boats exceeded those 

 by bait boats despite the deterioration of the 

 fishing after July and despite the larger ton- 

 nage i)er landing (Table 1) or average catch 

 per day (Figure 1) by the larger, but less 

 numerous, bait boats. 



MOVEMENT OF THE FLEET 



Figure 2 shows the approximate location of 

 albacore jig boats that reported catches during 

 the summer of 1970. Generally boats were 

 highly aggregated on a geographic basis — 



JULY 17 



Figure 2. — Approximate geographic center of the alba- 

 core jig fleet from 15 July to 4 August 1970. 



491 



