FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



255 



these of little esteem, except the head and finnes, 

 which stewed or baked is very good; these halli- 

 buts be little set by while basse is in season." 

 They seem to have maintained their numbers there 

 down to the first quarter of the nineteenth century, 

 when contemporary writers described them as 

 extremely numerous in Massachusetts Bay and 

 along Cape Cod, in fact around the whole coast 

 line of the Gulf of Maine. And they were dis- 

 covered in abundance on Nantucket Shoals, on 

 Georges Bank, on Browns Bank, and on the Seal 

 Island ground as soon as fishing was regularly 

 undertaken offshore. 



The cod fishermen of those days looked upon 

 them as a nuisance, seldom worth bringing to 

 market. And "It was the practice of the fisher- 

 men when halibut were troublesome to string them 

 on a line and hang them over the stem of the 

 vessel." 60 But a demand for halibut developed in 

 the Boston market sometime between 1820 and 

 1825, and they have been pursued relentlessly ever 

 since then, first inshore and then farther and 

 farther afield. 



The Massachusetts Bay — Cape Cod region 

 yielded large numbers of these great fish during 

 the early years of the fishery. Four men, for 

 instance, are reported as having caught 400 in two 

 days off Marblehead in 1837, while a party of 

 equal size is said to have landed 13,000 pounds off 

 Cape Cod in three weeks. And it was discovered 

 some time prior to 1840 that halibut congregated 

 in winter in the 25-30 fathom gully between the 

 tip of Cape Cod and Stellwagen Bank. However, 

 a shrinkage in the supply had been noticed along 

 shore even before 1839, for we find halibut de- 

 scribed in that year (in the Gloucester Telegraph) 

 as "formerly" caught along Cape Cod and in Barn- 

 stable Bay. And they had been so nearly fished 

 out in the Massachusetts Bay region by about 1850 

 that it no longer paid small boats to go there 

 especially for them. 



Halibut held out better in the northeastern 

 corner of the Gulf where there was not as ready a 

 market for them as there was in Boston; Perley 

 wrote of them as plentiful enough to be a plague to 

 the local fishermen off Brier Island as recently as 

 1852. But it was not long thereafter before their 

 numbers were greatly reduced there also. 



1 Ooode and Collins, and Fish. Ind. U. S., Sect. 5, vol. 1, 1887, p. 29-30. 



The offshore fishery for halibut began about 

 1830, when cod fishermen brought word to 

 Gloucester of a great abundance of them on 

 Georges Bank, 61 and they were caught there for a 

 few years thereafter in numbers that seem almost 

 unbelievable today. Thus we read of 250 caught 

 in three hours; of vessels loaded in a couple of 

 days; and of a single smack landing 20,000 pounds 

 in a day. They were taken in great plenty on 

 Nantucket Shoals, also, during this same period. 

 But the supply seems to have dwindled suddenly, 

 in the shoal waters both of Georges Bank and of 

 Nantucket Shoals, and so permanently that few 

 vessels went thither especially for halibut after 

 1850. Now forced to go further afield, the fishing 

 fleet found that halibut were plentiful on the Seal 

 Island ground; on Browns Bank; and in the 

 Eastern Channel or gully that separates the latter 

 from Georges Bank (localities which supplied the 

 New York and Boston markets for the next 

 decade). And in 1875 halibut fishing was extended 

 to deeper water (100 to 200 fathoms) on the south- 

 east slope of Georges Bank. But it was not long 

 before all these grounds were fished out to the 

 point where it was seldom possible to make paying 

 trips to them for halibut alone. And for many 

 years now, what few halibut have been caught in 

 the Gulf of Maine have been taken incidentally. 



The history, in short, of the halibut fishery leaves 

 no doubt that this species shows the effect of hard 

 fishing sooner than most sea fish, it being possible 

 to catch the majority of the stock on any limited 

 area in a few years. Long liners and otter trawlers 

 search all the good ground-fish bottoms of the Guff 

 of Maine and its banks so thoroughly and con- 

 stantly that the halibut never have a chance to 

 reestablish themselves in any abundance on the 

 shoaler grounds. They maintain their numbers 

 better on the deeper slopes chiefly because they are 

 subject to less intensive fishing there. 



It was fortunate for the fishing industry that 

 the depletion of the Gulf of Maine of halibut was 

 counterbalanced by the discovery of halibut in 

 abundance along the deeper slopes of the banks 

 to the north and east. And halibut fisherman 

 sailing from Gloucester had begun resorting to the 

 Grand Banks region by 1864-1866; to the west 

 Greenland Banks by 1866; to the Magdalens by 



•i Ooode and Collins (Fish. Ind. U. S., Sect. 5, vol. 1, 1887, p. 3) have cot 

 lected data on the Georges Bank halibut fishery and the former abundance of 

 the fish there. 



