FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 70, NO. 3 



first 10 years of this period the average annual 

 landings of food fish and shellfish were about 

 40.4 million pounds (18,300 metric tons), and in 

 the last 9 years about 35.7 million pounds (16,200 

 metric tons). Species which during the war 

 began to contribute less to the catch continued 

 in general to decline in importance; but the most 

 spectacular declines were the virtual collapse of 

 the two most important fisheries of the State, 

 the oyster and menhaden industries. 



INDUSTRIAL FISHERIES 



Industrial fisheries have been relatively im- 

 portant along the northeastern Atlantic coast of 

 the United States for a long time, although the 

 peak of landings was not reached until about 

 1955. The principal species, and for most of the 

 period of record the only industrial fishery re- 

 source of importance, has been the Atlantic men- 

 haden. The period of greatest development of 

 the Atlantic coast menhaden fishery came with 

 the decline of the Pacific sardine {Sardinops sag- 

 ax) fishery on the Pacific coast. Indeed, the re- 

 cent history of menhaden landings shows a re- 

 markable parallel to the rise and fall of the Pa- 

 cific sardine fishery, with a time lag of about 20 

 years (McHugh, 1969b). There is no reason- 

 able room for doubt that the principal cause of 

 the decline in the Atlantic menhaden fishery was 

 overfishing, as has been established for the Pa- 

 cific sardine fishery (Murphy, 1966). It would 

 have been prudent, for want of better informa- 

 tion, to manage the menhaden fishery in the light 

 of the extensive historical and scientific knowl- 

 edge of the sardine resource, but for various 

 reasons this was not done. The work of Dr. 

 Sette and his associates on the sardine resource 

 and its fishery (see, for example, Sette, 1969) 

 could have provided valuable guidance for re- 

 search and management of menhaden fishing if 

 it had been heeded on the Atlantic coast. The 

 Federal Government program on the Pacific sar- 

 dine was started by Dr. Sette in 1948, and the 

 results of this work, coupled with extensive stud- 

 ies begun much earlier by the State of California, 

 have provided detailed documentation of the ef- 

 fect of fishing on the sardine resource. Although 



50 



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UNSORTEO INDUSTRIAL FISH 



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SEA HERRING 



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MENHADEN 



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1880 



1890 1900 



1910 



1920 



1930 1940 



1950 



I960 1970 



Figure 3. — Annual landings of industrial fishes in the 

 State of New York, 1880-1970. The lines joining the 

 black circles at the right of the menhaden graph repre- 

 sent total landings of all industrial species. 



it is virtually certain that overfishing was the 

 primary cause of the decline of both fisheries, 

 the tendency of both resources to fluctuate widely 

 in abundance from natural causes was an im- 

 portant contributing factor, which made over- 

 fishing inevitable. 



The decline of the menhaden fishery north of 

 Chesapeake Bay has been much sharper than to 

 the southward. In New York the fishery is al- 

 most defunct (Figure 3). This decline could 

 have been predicted with some assurance from 

 the similarity of life histories of Atlantic men- 

 haden and Pacific sardine and from the similar 

 early collapse of the Pacific sardine fisheries in 

 the north. 



To state the background briefly, although both 

 species spawn sometimes in waters near the 

 northern ])arts of their ranges, the principal 

 spawning areas are to the south, ofl" southern Cal- 

 ifornia and Baja California, and to the south 

 of Chesapeake Bay. Each year the fish make a 



588 



