FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 223 



live weight. Block Island fish run smaller. A 7-foot fish weighs about 120 

 pounds; 10 to 11 feet long about 250 pounds; and a fish of 13 to 133^ feet, about 

 600 pounds, as taken from the water. 



Swordfish fry are quite different in appearance from the adults, having but 

 one long dorsal and one long anal fin, a rounded tail, both jaws equally elongate 

 and toothed, and the skin covered with rough spinous plates and scales; but fish 

 of haK a poimd weight such as are caught in abundance in the Mediterranean 

 resemble the adults. 



General range. — Both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, north to northern Noi-way, 

 the Newfoundland Banks, and Cape Breton; south to latitude about 35° south. 

 Also in the Mediterranean and Red Seas, about the Cape of Good Hope, and in 

 the Indian and Pacific Oceans. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — The swordfish seems to have attracted little 

 attention in the Gulf in colonial days, and though it has long supported a lucrative 

 fishery off New England we know little more of its life to-day than when Goode 

 (1883) gathered his "Materials for the History of the Swordfish." 



The outer part of the continental sheH from Block Island east to La Have 

 Bank is the chief center of abundance, with Nantucket Shoals and Georges Bank 

 perhaps the favorite grounds. A few swordfish are seen off Massachusetts Bay 

 and along the Maine coast every summer. During some summers, of which 1884 

 was one, large numbers appear there, and on these occasions they are killed all 

 around the Gulf from Cape Cod to Browns Bank, with Jeffreys Ledge and a zone 

 about 10 to 12 miles off the coast from Boon Island to Cape Elizabeth perhaps 

 their favorite resort. During most years, however, the great majority keep to 

 the offshore banks, and only odd fish are seen in the inner parts of the Gulf of 

 Maine, and they are rarely seen in the Bay of Fundy. Thus we find only 2,511 

 poimds (say 10 or 12 fish) brought in by the shore fishermen of Cumberland 

 County, 3 or 4 (800 poimds) landed in York County in 1919. A few are caught off 

 the west coast of Nova Scotia every summer (in 1920, a good swordfish year, 4,700 

 pounds, or about twenty-odd fish, were landed along the Yarmouth Coimty shore), 

 and over the basin of the Gulf. They are never plentiful in the inner parts of the Gulf 

 and rarely enter the Bay of Fundy. On the offshore banks, on the contrary, 

 25 or more are often seen in a day. Sometimes that many are in sight at one time, 

 especially over the southwest slope of Georges Bank, and several thousand are 

 killed every summer. In the year 1919, for example, vessels from Maine ports, 

 hunting mostly east of Nantucket, brought in about 425,000 pounds. Massachu- 

 setts vessels brought in 712,000 pounds, equivalent, say, to 4,000 fish. In 1920, 

 a big swordfish year, 2,258,051 pounds (something like 7,000 fish) were landed in 

 the ports of Boston, Gloucester, and Portland, not to mention such as were carried 

 to New Bedford, Newport, and New York. 



Swordfish, like all fish, fluctuate in abundance from year to year. Thus they 

 were more abundant in the summer and fall of 1904 than was ever known before; 

 plentiful, too, during the next two years; less so untO 1913; and very numerous 

 again in 1920. But on the whole the catch runs much more even, year by year, 

 than for most oceanic fish, seldom rising above 2,000,000 or falling below 1,000,000 

 pounds for the landings in Boston and Gloucester. 

 102274—251 15 



