100 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



respectively. In 1947, incidentally, the herring 

 catch of the Gulf was topped only by the catches 

 of haddock and of rosefish. 



It is not clear to what extent this range in the 

 catch from year to year is due to fluctuations in 

 the supply of fish; to differences in their availability; 

 or to the sundry economic factors that enter in. 

 What is certain is that with some 80 percent of 

 the catch consisting of sardine-sized fish weighing 

 only about one-half ounce, the toll taken cannot 

 have been less than 1% billion fish in the poorest 

 of recent years, 5 to 6 billion in the year when the 

 yield was greatest, i. e., numbers far greater than 

 that for any other Gulf of Maine fish. Come good 

 year then or bad, Capt. John Smith's account of 

 the herring of our Gulf thus applies equally well 

 today: "The savages compare the store in the sea 

 with the hair of their heads, and surely there are 

 an incredible abundance upon this coast." 62 



The sardine catch of the Bay of Fundy is made 

 almost wholly in weirs, 347 of which were operated 

 on the New Brunswick shore in 1947. On the 

 Maine coast, as a whole, a little less than two- 

 thirds the catch of herring, large and small, is 

 made in weirs and in purse seines, combined, a 

 little more than one-third nowadays in stop seines 

 (about 44,500,000 pounds in 1947). These are 

 used "to prevent the exit of the herring school from 

 a cove or inlet. . . . The seine is stretched around 

 the school with the ends of the net made fast to the 

 shore." And stop seines are used mostly at night, 

 when the presence of fish is betrayed by their 

 luminous trails, if the water is firing, or by the 



« General Hlstorle of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles, 1616, 

 reprinted In 1819 from London edition of 1629, p. 188. 



noise they make as they "flip" at the surface. 63 

 And some are still caught in floating traps (about 

 2 million pounds in 1947) which we have often 

 seen used in the harbors of Mount Desert. 



In 1947, seemingly a representative year, purse 

 seines yielded the Maine fishermen nearly as much 

 herring (about 36,100,000 pounds) as the weirs. 

 Their presence is detected, Scattergood tells us, 

 either by the firing of the water if by night, by echo 

 sounding apparatus, or by the use of a thin wire 

 suspended in the water, the vibrations of which 

 indicate the presence of fish that strike it. In 1947 

 eleven purse seiners were active in the fall fishery 

 for Maine herring. How many were engaged in 

 the New Brunswick and Maine winter fishery is 

 not known. 



Large catches of herring when on bottom also 

 are made by special otter trawls in European wa- 

 ters; and of the closely allied herring of British 

 Columbia of late. But the possibility of develop- 

 ing an otter-trawl fishery for herring in the Gulf of 

 Maine has not yet been explored. 



Finally, we may remark that herring fresh from 

 the water are among the most delicious of our 

 fishes, especially the small sizes. Their only draw- 

 back is that they do not keep well, being rich- 

 meated and oily, and in the larger sized fish the 

 many hair-like bones are troublesome. 



Hickory shad Pomolobus mediocris (Mitchill) 1815 

 Fall herring; Shad herring 



Jordan and Evermann, 1896-1900, p. 425. 



- See Scattergood, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Sp. Sei. Ecpt. No. 67, 

 1949, p. 8, for further details. 



Figure 45. — Hickory shad (Pomolobus mediocris), Chesapeake Bay region specimen. From Goode. Drawing by H. L. 



Todd. 



