288 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



reports from the master of one sampan who con- 

 sistently summarized his catches by weeks 

 throughout much of the year. 



GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 

 OF 1952 AND 1953 CATCHES 



Desjiite the large differences in total landings in 

 1952 and 1953, the geographical distribution of 

 catch and effort (table 5, tig. 5) is much the same. 

 In both years the leeward Oahu and Hawaii re- 

 gions furnished approximately 50 and 16 percent 

 of the total catch, respectively, and the oceanic 

 region and Maui were relatively unimportant with 

 less than 8 percent in the aggregate. The com- 

 bined windward Oahu and Kauai regions con- 

 tributed about 25 percent of the total catch in each 

 year, but in 1953 a much larger proportion of this 

 came from windward Oahu. 



Within the vicinity of Oahu, the distribution of 



effort appears to be related to the distance from 

 the home port ; the amount of effort expended in 

 the zones decreases as their distance from Hono- 

 lulu increases. This is probably because of the 

 fragile nature of the nehu {Stoleplionis pur- 

 fureus), the most important bait species. 



CATCH PER UNIT OF EFFORT IN THE 

 HAWAII SKIPJACK FISHERY 



If the regions of the fishery from Hawaii in the 

 southeast to Kauai in the northwest are arranged 

 in sequential order (fig. 6), there is some sugges- 

 tion of an increasing catch per unit-of -effort in the 

 direction of Kauai, but the inequities in the distri- 

 bution of effort and certain known differences in 

 the local fisheries make it doubtful that the ap- 

 parent trend is of biological significance. The 

 Hilo (Hawaii) fishermen usually make short trips 

 and land each day's catch on the day it was made, 



Table 5. — Geographical distrihiitlon of the 1952 and 1953 usable catch data 



[See fig. 4 for location of zones; C/E= catch/effort] 



*The Oahu region includes inshore and offshore Oahu, 2L, 5L, 2W, and 5W. For 1953, a few additional catches were made across zone boundaries within 

 the Oahu region. 



