FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 105 



of young herring at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy up to that time, though the 

 numbers of herring visiting any given locaUty on our coast and the duration of 

 their stay vary widely from year to year. As far back as the period from 1837 to 

 1857 Massachusetts Bay saw a marked diminution of the local supply of herring 

 followed shortly by its reestablishment in fuU strength, and any particidar locality — 

 for instance the Eastport region or Wood Island — would no doubt show similar 

 ups and downs from year to year or over periods of years. Local spawning grounds, 

 too, may be abandoned for a term of years — a very common occurrence.^ The 

 fact that the catch varies widely from year to year is not governed altogether by 

 the abundance of the fish themselves, for sundry economic factors enter in, and 

 except for the disappearance of the spring spawners from the Bay of Fundy no 

 general alteration, one way or another, far-reaching enough to have impressed 

 itself unmistakably on those chiefly concerned, has taken place in the herring 

 supply of the Gulf in recent years. In short, Capt. John Smith's (1616, p. 188) 

 account of the herring applies as well to-day: "The savages compare the store in 

 the sea with the hairs of their heads, and surely there are an incredible abundance 

 upon this coast." 



In the year 1919 more than 110,000,000 pounds of herring were caught in the 

 Gulf, about 3,400,000 pounds being taken on the Nova Scotia shore, 10,415,000 

 on the New Brunswick shore, 86,700,000 off the Maine coast, and 10,800,000 off 

 Massachusetts. Since at least 80 per cent of the total catch consisted of "sardines," 

 that is, of fish of only a few ounces weight, the toll taken can not have been less 

 than half a billion fish. Unfortunately, however, present plenty is no guaranty of 

 permanent abundance, for the history of the herring fisheries on the other side of 

 the Atlantic, where the record runs back for centuries, has been a succession of 

 periods of plenty and of scarcity since the earliest times. 



40. Hickory shad {Pomolohus mediocris Mitchill) 



Fall herring ; Shad herring 

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



Description. — The hickory shad is distinguishable from the common sea herring 

 by the absence of vomerine teeth, its very deep belly, upper jaw notched at the tip, 

 and the fact that its outline tapers toward both snout and tail in side view (fig. 43). 

 A hickory shad 13}^ inches long is about 4 inches deep, while a herring of that 

 length is only 3 inches deep. Furthermore, in the hickorj^ shad the lower jaw 

 projects much more than in the herring and the dorsal fin originates nearer the 

 snout than the tail, whereas in the herring it is about midway of the length of the 

 body though the difference in this respect is not great. One is more likely to con- 

 fuse this fish with the alewives, which resemble it in the great depth of the body. It 

 can be distinguished from the blueback by the color of the lining of the beUy, which 



' Moore, 1S98, p. 430. 



