FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 191 



Plentiful though mackerel sometimes are in the inner waters of the Gulf of 

 Maine, still larger numbers are found over Nantucket Shoals and Georges Bank 

 and off the outer coast of Nova Scotia, but with much variation in the local abund- 

 ance from year to year, as appears from the following table for two successive seasons 

 when the total catches from the whole Gulf of Maine region did not differ greatly. 

 This table comprises the landings of mackerel at Boston and Gloucester, Mass., 

 and Portland, Me., by the vessel fishery in 1916 and 1917. 



General migrations.^" — Wherever the mackerel occurs, whether in American or in 

 North European waters, it is a seasonal migrant, appearing near the coast in spring, 

 to vanish thence in autumn. The directions and extent of the journeys which it 

 carries out have been the subject of much discussion ever since the fishery first 

 assimied importance, because of their intrinsic interest, their bearing on the prose- 

 cution of the fishery, and because this fish has been the subject of much international 

 dispute, but although a vast nimiber of observations have been made and many pages 

 written on the subject, the knowledge sufficiently exact to clear all aspects of the 

 question is stiU lacking. The point chiefly at issue has been whether the main bodies 

 of mackerel merely sink and move directly out to the nearest deep water, when 

 they leave the coast, or whether, and to what extent, they combine their offshore 

 and onshore journeys with the north and south migrations in which most fishermen 

 believe. 



It seems well established, however, and is now generally accepted, that the 

 coastwise journeys of the mackerel are not as extended as was once believed, but that 

 the schools that visit the Gulf of Maine are not the same fish that are seen earher 

 south of New York, and that the Gulf of St. Lawrence mackerel are still another 

 body. The most direct evidence that no general movement takes place from south 

 to north along the coast, but that the arrival of mackerel in spring is in the nature of 

 successive waves coming in from more and more northerly parts of an extensive win- 

 tering ground, is that although they appear earlier and spawn earher west of Block 

 Island, the adults are either green or near spawning condition on their first arrival 

 in the Gulf of Maine and farther east, never spent, as they would be had they come 

 up the coast spawning en route; and, as several of our predecessors have remarked, 

 it is certain that the mackerel spawning in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in July can not 

 be the same fish that spawn off New England in May and June. The fact that 

 mackerel appear practically simultaneously off Cape Cod and southern Nova Scotia, 

 and that in some years, at least, they are reported as early at Cape Breton and even in 



•• The literature dealing with this subject is very extensive. See especially Goode, Collins, Earll. and Clark (1884) and Tracy 

 (Thirty-seventh .\nnual Report, Rhode Island Commissioners of Inland Fisheries, 1907, p. 43) (or the American mackerel. 



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