386 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



Africa; also Mediterranean; both coasts of south- 

 ern Africa; Madagascar; eastern Indian Ocean and 

 Malay Peninsula; southern Australia and New 

 Zealand. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — Bluefish 

 have been taken at one time or another wherever 

 any information is available as to the local fishes 

 around the western side of the Gulf. But they 

 have seldom been seen east of Penobscot Bay 

 (reported at Mount Desert in 1889); we have 

 heard of only one taken in the Bay of Fundy, a 

 fish caught in Minas Basin in July 1951, 6 and 

 we have found no record of bluefish off the Nova 

 Scotian coast of the open Gulf of Maine. But 

 one was caught off Halifax in 1925, another more 

 recently near Liverpool on the outer coast of 

 Nova Scotia, 6 and they were reported "common" 

 near Port Medway, Nova Scotia, in the summer of 

 1951. 7 



In our Gulf, too, they seem to be confined to 

 the vicinity of the coast (they are unknown in the 

 central basin or on Georges Bank), the small ones 

 ("snappers") running up into brackish water, 

 as in the Parker River, but the larger sizes 

 (3 pounds or more) keeping to the outside waters. 



The geographic distribution of the places where 

 they have been recorded would suggest at first 

 glance that bluefish are practically universal in the 

 western side of the Gulf. But this is true only 

 for brief terms of years and at long intervals, for 

 while they have been known to swarm there for 

 several summers in succession, they may then 

 be so rare over periods of many years that the 

 capture of a single fish causes remark. 



Bluefish must have been common at the time 

 of the first settlement, at least as far north as 

 what is now southern Maine, for Josselyn, writing 

 in 1672, referred to them as better meat than the 

 salmon. 



Bluefish were plentiful off southern New 

 England and also about Nantucket in colonial 

 times, but they seem to have disappeared thence 

 about 1764, not to reappear there until about 

 1810. From that time on they increased in 

 abundance west and south of Cape Cod, but none 

 were reported north of the Cape until 1837. And 

 since a fish as ubiquitous as the bluefish would 



certainly have attracted attention and its presence 

 found its way into print, had it been abundant 

 in the Massachusetts Bay region, it is safe to say 

 that very few, if any, visited the Gulf of Maine 

 during the late eighteenth century, or the first 

 quarter of the nineteenth. 



According to Storer, the first bluefish seen north 

 of Cape Cod after their long period of absence, 

 was one caught on October 25, 1S37; Captain 

 Atwood 8 saw them for the first time at Province- 

 town in 1838. According again to Storer, bluefish 

 were taken yearly from the wharves at Boston 

 after 1844. And by 1850 they were so plentiful 

 about Cape Ann that fishermen complained 

 of them as driving away most of the other school- 

 ing fish, while in 1863, which seems to have marked 

 the culmination of this flood of bluefish, they were 

 extremely abundant in the Massachusetts Bay 

 region and especially at Provincetown. 9 They 

 remained plentiful in the southern part of the 

 Gulf of Maine for several summers after 1863, 

 but by 1872 they were reported as much less so, 

 and there have not been enough bluefish anywhere 

 in the Gulf since the late 1870's to menace the 

 local mackerel fishery. 



The yearly catch for the Cape Cod Bay region 

 had fallen to about 22,000 pounds by 1888 (93 

 pounds for Essex County), to only about 3,000 

 pounds for 1889. But some bluefish were seen as 

 far north and east as Mount Desert in that year, 

 and evidently more of them rounded the Cape 

 during the next 9 seasons, for the catches for the 

 years 1890-1898 were between about 26,000 pounds 

 and 80,000 pounds for Cape Cod Bay; with a few 

 hundred pounds for the Massachusetts coast 

 north of Boston. But this period of moderate 

 plenty was followed by a period of scarcity 10 so 

 extreme (detailed statistics are wanting) that no 

 catch as large as 5,000 pounds was reported again 

 as made anywhere in our Gulf in any year for 

 which statistics are available from 1900 " down to 

 the early 1920's. In 1906, in fact, in 1910 and 

 again in 1919, only an occasional school can have 



' Reported to us by Dr. A. H. Lelm. 



• Leim, Proc. Nova Scotian Inst. Sci., vol. 17, Part IV, 1930, p. xlvi. 

 7 Information from Dr. A. H. Leim, from report by L. R. Day, Fisheries 

 Research Board of Canada. 



» Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., vol. 9, 1863, p. 189. 



• Baird (Rept. U. S. Comm. Fish (1871-1872) 1873, p. 237-240), and Ooode, 

 (Fish. Ind. U. S.; Sect. 1, 1884, p. 435-437) have collected much information 

 about the early history of the bluefish. 



10 Reported catches for the Cape Cod Bay region by all methods were 

 only about 3,600 pounds in 1899 and 7,659 pounds in 1900. 



ii Statistics of the pound net catches, by towns, were published in the 

 Annual Report of the Commissioners on Fisheries and Game of Massa- 

 chusetts for the years 1906, 1908, 1909, 1910, 1918, and 1919. 



