FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 70, NO. 3 



tons), and dropped off again. Until recently 

 most of the catch has come from Gardiners and 

 Peconic Bays; but as landings dropped in the 

 middle 1960s, fishing effort shifted to the ocean 

 off the south shore of Long Island and to a lesser 

 extent into Long Island Sound. 



Richard Miller, Executive Secretary of the 

 Long Island Fishermen's Association (personal 

 communication), says that the decline in New 

 York landings of northern puffer was caused by 

 the growing fishery in Chesapeake Bay (Mc- 

 Hugh, 1969a) , which led to a substantial decline 

 in prices. 



The declining catch of northern puffer in the 

 bays of the eastern end of Long Island may have 

 been caused by the decline of the pound net fish- 

 ery, by overfishing, or by natural causes. The 

 drop has been substantial, from a maximum of 

 over 850,000 pounds (385 metric tons) in 1963 

 (over 90% of total commercial landings of puf- 

 fers in New York) to 90,000 pounds (41 metric 

 tons) in 1969 (less than 35% of total New York 

 puffer landings). Recent development of fisher- 

 ies for this species in the ocean and in Long 

 Island Sound suggest that it may be generally an 

 underexploited resource in the waters of the 

 State. 



The northern puflfer is one of the more im- 

 portant species in the coastal sport fisheries of 

 New York, although this is more by accident than 

 by design. According to Briggs (1965) they are 

 regarded as a nuisance, especially by flounder 

 fishermen, who complain that puffers "steal their 

 bait." Indeed, when puffers are abundant in 

 Great South Bay, spring catches of winter 

 flounders go down, not necessarily because they 

 are less abundant but because puffers take the 

 bait more readily and this discourages flounder 

 fishermen. In the bays of eastern Long Island 

 the catch of puffers by sport fishermen appar- 

 ently has not had a great effect on the commer- 

 cial fishery, for Briggs (1968) found that this 

 was not a particularly important element of 

 sport catches there. 



The increase in commercial landings of puf- 

 fers from 1960 to 1963 (Figure 17) probably 

 was caused by a real increase in abundance. This 

 is confirmed by two sport fishing studies. Briggs 

 (1965) estimated that the sport catch of puffers 



in Great South Bay increased about fivefold from 

 1960 to 1962, from about 58,000 to about 314,000 

 fish. The sport catch was almost as high in 

 1963 as in 1962. Schaefer (1967) estimated the 

 relative abundance of fishes in the surf zone on 

 the south shore of Long Island and found that 

 puffers were the most abundant species in catch- 

 es of a beach seine in 1962 and 1963 (about two- 

 thirds of all the fish caught), whereas in 1961 

 less than 1% of the catch had been puffers. 



In 1965 it was estimated that about 26 mil- 

 lion pounds (11,750 metric tons) of northern 

 puffers were taken by sport fishermen along the 

 middle Atlantic coast. 



ATLANTIC MACKEREL 



Once an important fishery, the domestic At- 

 lantic mackerel industry has been producing for 

 the last 15 years or more only about 3% of the 

 maximum recorded catch in 1884 (Hoy and 

 Clark, 1967). Landings of mackerel in New 

 York have fluctuated more or less in proportion 

 to domestic landings along the Atlantic coast as 

 a whole. Most of the catch in New York now is 

 made in pound nets, although gill nets at one time 

 were the most important gear. Thus, to some 

 extent the decline in New York landings (Fig- 

 ure 18) may have been caused by the decline of 

 the pound net fishery. The demand for mack- 

 erel in the United States also is less than it was 

 early in the century. Abundance varies widely 

 from natural causes (Sette, 1938). 





?^ 



1880 



1890 1900 



1910 



1920 1930 1940 1950 I960 



1970 



Figure 18. — Annual commercial landings of Atlantic 

 mackerel in the State of New York, 1887-1970. 



Mackerel are important in high-seas fisheries 

 by foreign fleets. In 1968 the total catch re- 

 ported from ICNAF statistical areas was 71,595 

 metric tons, of which only 3,001 metric tons were 

 caught by American commercial fishermen. 

 Thus, the present total catch by all nations is 

 almost equal to the greatest domestic catch on 



598 



