FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 239 



General range* — Widely but irregularly distributed in the warmer parts of the 

 Atlantic and Indian Oceans. North to the Gulf of Maine on the Atlantic coast of 

 the United States. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — So far as we can learn bluefish have never been 

 taken in the Bay of Fundy or off the Nova Scotian side of the Gulf. In fact they 

 have very seldom been seen east of Penobscot Bay (reported at Mount Desert in 

 1889), and so far as the Gulf is concerned it seems that they are confined to the neigh- 

 borhood of the coast, for they are unknown in the central basin or on Georges Bank. 

 Small bluefish ("snappers") run up into protected harbors, such as Provincetown 

 and Duxbury, and river mouths into brackish water. The larger sizes (3 pounds or 

 more), however, keep to the outsidewaters. 



The most interesting aspect of the occurrence of bluefish in the Gulf of Maine is, 

 that while it has been known to swarm there for several summers in succession, it 

 may then be so rare over periods of many years that the capture of even a single fish 

 causes remark. At the time of the first settlement bluefish must have been common, 

 at least as far north as what is now southern Maine, for Josselyn, writing in 1672, 

 spoke of them there and was evidently familiar with them on the table, describing 

 them as better meat than the salmon. There is no record of them north of Cape 

 Cod during the seventeenth century, however. 



In colonial times bluefish were plentiful off southern New England and about 

 Nantucket, but they seem to have disappeared thence about 1764, to reappear about 

 1810. From that time on they increased in abundance west and south of Cape Cod, 

 but none was reported north of the cape until 1837, and since a fish as ubiquitous as 

 the bluefish would certainly have attracted attention and its presence would have 

 found its way into print had it been at all abundant in the Massachusetts Bay region, 

 it is safe to say that very few, if any, visited the Gulf of Maine during the eighteenth 

 century or the first quarter of the nineteenth. According to Storer, the first bluefish 

 seen north of Cape Cod thereafter was one caught on October 25, 1837, and in 1838 

 Captain Atwood (1863, p. 189) saw them for the first time at Provincetown; but 

 after 1844, according to Storer, bluefish were taken yearly from the wharves at 

 Boston, and they came in greater numbers year after year, until by 1850 they were so 

 plentiful about Cape Ann that fishermen complained of them driving away most of 

 the other schooling fish, while in 1863, which seems to have marked the culmination 

 of the flood tide of bluefish, they were extremely abundant in the Massachusetts Bay 

 region and especially at Provincetown. 5 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 abundant off Gloucester, and they were no longer sufficiently 

 plentiful north of Cape Cod to menace the local mackerel fishery after 1878 or 1879. 



Bluefish have never appeared in any numbers north of Boston since 1889, 6 in 

 which year they were reported common as far north as Mount Desert, but consider- 

 able numbers were taken along the inner as well as the outer shores of Cape Cod 



• Although bluefish are said to range as far north as Nova Scotia (Halkett, 1913, p. 42), we have found no recent report of them 

 beyond the westernside of the Oulf of Maine. 



5 Baird (1873) and Ooode et al. (18S4) have collected much data on the early history of the bluefish. 



6 None was reported north of Plymouth in 1887 or 1888. 



