FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



437 



Scotia out to Browns Bank rose to 17 million 

 pounds in that year, to about 55 million pounds 

 in 1936, about 66-89 million pounds in 1938 and 

 in 1939, to about 106 million pounds in 1940, and 

 to about 136 million pounds in 1941. The land- 

 ings fell to about 100 million pounds in 1943, but 

 rose again in 1945 to a peak of 151 million pounds. 

 This corresponds to about an equal number of 

 individual fish, a number larger than that for any 

 other fish commercially important in our Gulf, 

 except the herring. 



It is now generally believed that this yearty 

 drain was greater than a fish requiring 8 or 9 years 

 to reach marketable size could withstand ; the catch 

 (Gulf of Maine and southwestern Nova Scotia) 

 fell by about 30 percent the next year, and to only 

 about one-fourth as much in 1949 as had been 

 landed from these areas in 1945. 44 And this would 

 have been calamitous for the fishery had the fleet 

 not been able to draw on the rosefish to the east- 

 ward, along the Nova Scotian shelf, whence some- 

 thing like 133 million pounds were landed in New 

 England ports in 1949, or between three and four 

 times as much as from the Gulf of Maine. 



We refer the reader to the table on page 333 for 

 the monetary value of the catches of rosefish in 

 recent years, as compared with cod, haddock, and 

 mackerel. 



George F. Kelly, writing in the Maine Coast 

 Fisherman, 46 has recently emphasized the prob- 

 ability that the Nova Scotian catch may also be 



u Landings of 10S million pounds for 1946; only about 36 million pounds 

 (or 1919. 

 « Vol. 5, No. 7, Jan. 1951, p. 9. 



expected to decline from its present high level as 

 soon as the accumulated stock of old fish is reduced 

 there, as it has been in the Gulf of Maine. The 

 fishery would then have had to depend on the 

 annual increment of growth of a stock that has 

 stabilized at a level considerably below its virgin 

 state, unless operations had been extended to New- 

 foundland waters, where the same chain of events 

 will eventually follow. And we must expect this 

 increment to be far smaller for the slow-growing 

 rosefish than it is for faster growing fishes, such as 

 the cod or the haddock. 



Finally, almost the entire commercial catch is 

 taken in otter trawls; also while the rosefish is of 

 such great importance to the commercial fisher- 

 men, it offers nothing to the angler; most of them 

 live too deep to be within his reach, and any 

 hooked would come in with very little resistance. 



Black-bellied rosefish Helicolenus dactyloplerus 

 (De la Roche) 1809 



Red bream; Blue mouth 



Jordan and Evermann, 1896-1900, p. 1837 as (H. dacty- 

 loplerus (Dc la Roche) and H. madcrensis Goode and Bean 

 1895). » 



Description. — This species resembles the com- 

 mon rosefish closely in its general form and in the 

 outline and arrangement of its fins. But the lower 

 7 to 9 rays of its pectoral fins are free from the fin 

 membrane along the outer half to one-third of their 

 length, and the upper margin of the pectorals is 



« We have examined some of Goode and Bean's specimens and agree with 

 Holt and Byrne (Fisheries, Ireland, Sci. Inv. (1906), v. 1908) that the so- 

 called //. maderentis is identical with //. dactyloplcriw. 



Figure 224. — Black-bellied rosefish (Helicolenus dactyloplerus), off southern New England. Drawing by Louella E. Cable. 



