REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS. 9 



Fish dealers doubt that the closed five years during- which 

 mackerel could not be caug-ht with a net, has had the effect of 

 bringing- the X3resent increase. For five years previous to June 1, 

 1894, the United States statute forbade the taking of mackerel by 

 net, and when the season of 1895 opened it was thought the catch 

 would be large, but it was not. Now, however, the mackerel are 

 very plentiful, and in waters where the United States statute did 

 not operate. 



" There is no accounting- for the great increase in mackerel," 

 said a well known Fulton Market fish dealer. " I don't think the 

 law had anything to do with it. The supply is practically in- 

 exhaustible. It is only a question of the fishermen looking in 

 the right places and having favorable weather. For some years 

 the catch has been small, because the larger schools have not been 

 reached and the supply was so low^ that many dealers went out of 

 the mackerel business and thousands of consumers went without 

 the fish. Now the supply has come up to the demand, but not 

 beyond yet, for the demand for mackerel is an enormously large 

 one." 



Inquiry about the market develops the fact that ten years ago 

 the supply of mackerel was so large that after the market was 

 supplied at the lowest possible price, each day loads of the fish 

 were emptied into the garbage scows. Then the supply began to 

 fall off, and the past seven years it has not been nearly equal to 

 the demand, and prices have been high. A strange thing is that 

 during these years of scarcity, the fish that were caught were 

 large in size, running from one to three pounds each, while now 

 five or six combined weigh a single pound. — {Neio ITork IIe7'ald.) 



We copy the following description of a new way to take 

 mackerel : 



NEW WAYS OF TAKING MACKEREL. 



The fall run of mackerel at Block Island is unusually heavy. 

 The fish are large, too but so shy that the old ways of taking them 

 with hook and line, drift nets, and seines, each of which proved 

 successful in its turn, have failed. About four years ago the 

 eastern mackerel fishing fell off largely for this reason. This 

 year the fish are more plentiful than ever, but they are just as 

 cunning, and while the catch exceeds by far the catch for the 

 same period of last year, the number of fish taken is as nothing 

 compared with the number of fish seen. 



