McHUGH: MARINE FISHERIES OF NEW YORK 



The phenomenon of the rise and fall of the 

 shad fishery in the Hudson River from 1924 to 

 1953 has been analyzed in some detail by Burdick 

 (1954) . He concluded that overfishing from 1941 

 to 1951 was responsible for the decline, which 

 first became noticeable in 1946. He found no evi- 

 dence that water pollution had any different ef- 

 fect on the shad stocks of the river during the 

 period of rising catches than during the period 

 after 1945. The overfishing was caused, accord- 

 ing to Burdick, by the increased demand for fish- 

 ery products during the war which led to relax- 

 ation of the fishing regulations (substantial 

 shortening of the weekly closed season). 



BLUEFISH 



Clark, 1968), but for the Atlantic coast as a 

 whole the sport catch in 1965 was reported to 

 be over 90 milHon pounds (41,000 metric tons), 

 almost 15 times the total commercial catch of 

 bluefish. Thus, it is probable that recreational 

 fishermen take much more bluefish than com- 

 mercial fishermen from New York waters. 

 Briggs (1962, 1965, 1968) has confirmed that 

 bluefish are among the most important species in 

 the sport fisheries of Long Island. 



Bluefish migrate to New York coastal waters 

 in summer. Abundance is notably variable, but 

 it is not understood clearly whether this is caused 

 by real variations in abundance, or by a response 

 to changing oceanographic conditions, or both. 

 Abundance appears to have been increasing for 

 the past 10 years or more. 



The bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix) is a mys- 

 terious oceanic visitor to the coastal waters of 

 New York. Commercial landings at the turn of 

 the century (Figure 8) were 10 million pounds 

 or more (average of about 4,800 metric tons for 

 the 3 years 1897, 1901, and 1904). Early in 

 the 20th century commercial landings dropped 



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1970 



Figure 8. — Annual commercial landings of bluefish in the 

 State of New York, 1880-1970. 



abruptly, then rose from much less than a mil- 

 lion pounds (135 metric tons) in the 1920s to 

 about a million pounds (450 metric tons) in the 

 1930s, dropped to a very low level in 1940, and 

 have been increasing, with some fluctuation, to 

 nearly 2 million pounds (725 metric tons) in 

 1970. 



Bluefish are an important and much sought 

 after sport fish in the middle Atlantic region. 

 Recreational catches for New York waters alone 

 are not available in published analyses of data 

 gathered by the Census Bureau (Deuel and 



Figure 9. — Annual commercial landings of weakfish in 

 the State of New York, 1880-1970. 



WEAKFISH 



The weakfish or gray seatrout (Cynoscion re- 

 galis) has been an important commercial species 

 along the Atlantic coast. At the turn of the 

 century most of the catch came from New York 

 and New Jersey waters. Later the center of the 

 fishery shifted southward to the area from Del- 

 aware Bay to the North Carolina sounds. The 

 greatest landings recorded in New York were in 

 1908 (Figure 9) at over 11 million pounds (5,100 

 metric tons). Landings dropped to less than 1 

 million pounds (400 metric tons) in 1929, rose 

 slowly to over 2 million (1,000 metric tons) m 

 1946, then dropped to very low levels after about 

 1948. The abundance of the species has declined 

 along the entire Atlantic coast if commercial 

 catches are a valid criterion. Recently, however, 

 it apparently has been more abundant in the 

 coastal waters of New York, especially in sport 



593 



