MARINE FISHERIES OF NEW YORK STATE' 



J. L. McHuGH- 



ABSTRACT 



Review of the history of landings of fish and shellfish in the State of New York shows 

 that the record since 1880 can be divided into three periods. The first was a period of 

 development of coastal fisheries in shallow waters, which ended about 1930. The second, 

 which lasted until the early 1950s, was a period of extension to fishing grounds farther 

 offshore, the era of the trawl fisheries. The third was a period of steady decline in land- 

 ings, still under way, characterized by a return to inshore resources. 



The 90-year record has seen the rise and virtual collapse of the industrial fisheries of 

 the State, steady decline of the oyster industry to a relatively minor status, and growth 

 and decline of many other once-important fisheries. The variable level of total annual 

 landings has been maintained by constant shifting from one resource to another as the 

 stocks of each have declined in turn. This is a classic example of the evolution of a coastal 

 fishery under a regime which offers no effective management. 



Popular opinion is almost unanimous in blaming foreign fishing for the ills of the do- 

 mestic fisheries. It is believed that unilateral extension of national jurisdiction would 

 remedy the situation. In reality, although foreign fishing is not without effect, it im- 

 pinges on relatively few of the coastal fishery resources of New York State. The major 

 problems are domestic, and they will be most difficult to solve. 



It seems particularly appropriate, in a volume 

 which honors Dr. 0. E. Sette, to discuss the ma- 

 rine fisheries of one of the northeastern States. 

 It was in this general area that he did some of 

 his earliest and best known scientific work, on 

 Scomber scombrus, the Atlantic mackerel (Sette, 

 1930a, 1930b, 1931, 1932, 1933a, 1933b, 1934, 

 1938, 1943, 1950). It also is appropriate to use 

 as basic data for this paper the published histor- 

 ical statistics on commercial fish catches, because 

 for about 6 years Dr. Sette was Assistant in 

 Charge of the Division of Fishery Industries in 

 the United States Commission of Fisheries. In 

 this capacity he was author of the annual reports 

 of the Federal Government on commercial fish- 

 ery landings (Sette, 1925, 1926a, 1926b, 1928; 

 Sette and Fiedler, 1929). 



When Dr. Sette first became responsible for 

 gathering and publishing statistics on the com- 



' Parts of the analysis on which this paper is based 

 were made under support of a fellowship with the Wood- 

 row Wilson International Center for Scholars, Wash- 

 ington, D.C., July and August 1971. 



" Marine Sciences Research Center, State University 

 of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11790. 



mercial fisheries of the United States, only a few 

 surveys of landings had been made and pub- 

 lished. These began with data for 1880 and rep- 

 i-esented a few, usually widely scattered, years. 

 The precision and completeness of these early 

 records is questionable; but, when Dr. Sette be- 

 gan to gather the data for 1923, his well-known 

 concern for accuracy and thoroughness began to 

 be felt and his tenure in the 1920s marked the 

 beginning of an almost unbroken series of an- 

 nual reports on many aspects of the commercial 

 fisheries of the United States, including landings 

 by weight and value for each of the States. 



Gathered, as they must be, by various indirect 

 methods and by a relatively small force of field 

 agents, these data cannot be completely accurate. 

 It is obvious also that total landings are not very 

 good indices of abundance of a species, for 

 abundance can vary from many causes, such as 

 changes in demand, or fishing eff'ort, competi- 

 tion from other fisheries, and other economic 

 forces. Yet no one would challenge seriously 

 the value of these data as general indicators of 

 trends in the fisheries and even as gross indicat- 

 ors of changing abundance. It is surprising that 



Manuscript accepted May 1972. 



FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 70, NO. 3, 1972. 



585 



