398 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHEBIES 



General range. — Both sides of the North Atlantic. On the American coast 

 pollock have been taken as far south as Chesapeake Bay," though they are very 

 rare beyond New York. They occur regularly in small numbers in Narragansett 

 Bay and are plentiful from the Woods Hole region, Nantucket Shoals, and Cape 

 Cod to Cape Breton. They also enter the southeastern part of the Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence but are not plentiful enough farther in to appear in the fishing returns, 

 and they are unknown along its north shore though odd fish have been reported 

 as far north as Hudson and Davis Straits. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — The Gulf of Maine . is the chief center of 

 abundance for this fish on the western side of the Atlantic, and it is one of the half 

 dozen species that support the great commercial fisheries of the Gulf. Pollock are 

 caught in abundance all around its shores from Cape Sable to Cape Cod. 



Pollock, unlike cod and haddock, are most abundant in the coastal belt from 

 close to land out to about the 75-fathom contour, but though pollock are seldom 

 reported over the deep basin they are caught in fair numbers on the offshore banks. 

 The reader will gain some idea of the abundance of this fish and how universal 

 it is along the coasts of the Gulf from the following statistics of the shore catch 

 for the year 1919. The west coast of Nova Scotia from Cape Sable to the mouth 

 of the Bay of Fundy reported about 1,000,000 pounds; the Scotian side of the 

 bay, more than 4,500,000 pounds; the New Brunswack shore nearly 8,000,000; 

 the coast of Maine east of Casco Bay nearly 3,000,000 (these three items just 

 mentioned include the landings from German Bank, from the vicinity of Lurcher 

 Shoal, and from Grand Manan Bank) ; and Casco Bay to the Merrimac River more 

 than 1,000,000 pounds. Twelve million odd pounds were also taken by the gill- 

 netters between Portland and Provincetown, chiefly in the neighborhood of Boon 

 Island and the Isles of Shoals, on Jeffreys Ledge, and in Massachusetts Bay, while 

 6,000,000 pounds more, caught inshore by larger vessels, can not be classified by 

 locality. This totals nearly 36,000,000 pounds. 



Pollock can not be described as abundant anywhere west of Cape Cod and 

 Nantucket, but small amounts (small by comparison vdth the Gulf of Maine land- 

 ings) are yearly caught in season (p. 400) along the southern shores of New England 

 and in New York waters, and a few even as far as New Jersey. For instance, 

 Rhode Island reported 291,430 pounds in 1905 and about 100,000 pounds in 1919; 

 Connecticut, 322,116 and 28,400 pounds, respectively, in these two years; New 

 York, 81,710 pounds in 1915 and 279,451 pounds in 1917; and New Jersey 

 12,824 pounds in 1915 and 40,611 pounds in 1917. 



Practically all the fish that compose the shore catch are caught within 20 and 

 most of them within 10 miles of land. Many, in fact, are taken right along the 

 shore, as appears from the fact that the weirs and traps of Maine and Massachusetts 

 yielded 1,000,000 pounds in 1919, but the most successful fishing is with gill nets, 

 as just noted. 



Pollock has always been one of the principal fish caught with hook and line 

 on the banks and ledges in the inner part of the gulf, near Lurcher Shoal for in- 



B* W. C. Schroeder of the Bureau of Fisheries informs us that a pollock 12 inches long (identifled by Dr. W. C. Kendall) was 

 taken at Buckroe Beach, Va., on March 26, 1S94. Previous to this its most southerly record was oS New Jersey. 



