476 BULLETIN OF THE BTJBEAU OF FISHERIES 



plague to the local fishermen off Brier Island as recently as 1852, but it was not long 

 thereafter before their numbers there were greatly reduced. 



The offshore fishery for halibut began about 1830, when the cod fishermen 

 brought word to Gloucester of a great abundance of them on Georges Bank,^* and 

 for a few years thereafter they were caught there in numbers which to-day seem 

 almost unbelievable. Thus we read of 250 caught in three hours, of vessels loaded 

 in a couple of days, and of a single smack landing 20,000 pounds in a day. They 

 were also taken in great plenty on Nantucket Shoals during this same period, but 

 the supply seems to have dwindled suddenly in 1848 in the shoal waters both of 

 Georges Bank and of the Shoals, and so permanently that few vessels went thither 

 especially for halibut after 1850. Now forced to seek further afield, the fishing 

 fleet found that halibut were plentiful on the Seal Island ground, on Browns Bank, 

 and in the Eastern Channel or "gully" separating the latter from Georges Bank — 

 localities which supplied the New York and Boston markets for the next decade. 

 In 1875 halibut fishing was undertaken in deep water (100 to 200 fathoms) on the 

 southeast slope of Georges Bank, but it was not long before all these grounds were 

 fished out to the point where it was seldom possible to make paying trips to them 

 for halibut alone. For many years now most of the halibut caught in the Gulf of 

 Maine have been taken incidentally by cod, haddock, or hake fishermen, few vessels 

 fitting for these great fish alone unless bound further afield. 



Fortunately for the fishing industry the depletion of the Gulf of Maine was 

 compensated for by the discovery of halibut in such abundance along the deeper 

 slopes of the banks to the north and east that at first they seemed inexhaustible; 

 and for many years now most of the halibut fishermen sailing from New England 

 ports have resorted to the neighborhood of Sable Island Bank (fishing, however, in 

 deep water), to the general region of the Grand Banks, to Greenland, or to Iceland. 



Although there is not one halibut in the Gulf to-day, where there were hundreds 

 in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the geographical range of this noble 

 fish is as extensive there as ever it was, odd halibut still being caught along Cape 

 Cod, in Massachusetts Bay (where a good many "chickens" of 10 pounds and up- 

 ward were brought in during the summer of 1922), all along the Maine coast, in 

 the Bay of Fundy, and on all the offshore grounds. Thus we find small boats 

 accounting for the following catches in 1919, following the coast line around from 

 Cape Cod: 



Massachusetts: Pounds 



Barnstable County -_ 10, 211 



Suffolk County • 1, 449 



Essex County 6, 081 



Maine: 



York County 3, 0.50 



Cumberland County 3, 844 



Sagadahoc County 11, 040 



Lincoln County SCO 



Knox County 22, 275 



Hancock County 17, 380 



Washington County 38, 165 



« Qoode and Collins (1887, p. 3) have collected data on the Georges Bank halibut fishery and the former abundance of 

 the fish there. 



