FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



99 



both by stranding on beaches during storms, and 

 by pollution of the water. Many instances of 

 this kind have been reported. Allen, 68 for exam- 

 ple, saw young herring in windrows for miles on 

 the strand at Rye Beach, N. H., in August 1911. 

 A slaughter of herring (still more instructive be- 

 cause the exact course of events was followed) took 

 place at Cohasset, on the south shore of Massa- 

 chusetts Bay, in October 1920. On the 5th of 

 that month a large school of "sperling," 4 to 5 

 inches in length, ran up the harbor (which is 

 nearly landlocked), probably driven in by silver 

 hake (at least so local fishermen said); were 

 trapped there by the falling tide, and stranded on 

 the mud. So numerous were they that the flats 

 were entirely covered with them and it was esti- 

 mated that 20,000 barrels of fish perished. Dur- 

 ing the next few days the fish (alternately covered 

 and uncovered by the tide) decayed, and despite 

 the tidal circulation, so fouled the water that 

 lobsters impounded in floating cars died. On the 

 10th there was a second smaller run of herring, 

 and on the 15th a third run came as numerous as 

 the first, the newcomers dying soon after they 

 entered the harbor. Altogether, it was estimated 

 that 50,000 barrels of fish perished, of which more 

 than 90 percent were "sperling," 5 to 10 percent 

 were large adults, and a few were small mackerel 

 and silver hake, besides large numbers of smelt. 

 The flats were silvery with herring scales at low 

 tide by the last half of October, when we saw 

 them, and the residents about the harbor found the 

 stench almost unbearable. But the fish decom- 

 posed and the water purified itself during the 

 winter months. 



Mass destructions of young herring have also 

 been reported in other Gulf of Maine harbors. 

 Thus, Dr. Austin H. Clark reported that early in 

 August 1925 the mud flats in Manchester Harbor, 

 on the north side of Massachusetts Bay, were 

 white with stranded herring 3 to 5 inches long, 

 packed several deep at low tide along the sides of 

 the little drains and hollows. Another such 

 destruction took place in the same harbor in the 

 summer of 1928. Vast quantities of herring spawn 

 are likewise cast up on the beaches every year to 

 perish in north European waters; this also happens 

 to some extent in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 



Numerical abundance and importance. — Moore 



■ Mem. Boston Soo. Nat. Hist., vol. 8, No. 2, 1916, p. 202. 



(1898), who sifted many sources of information 

 concluded (we believe rightly) that no general 

 decrease had taken place in the abundance of 

 young herring at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy 

 up to that time. But it is common knowledge 

 among fishermen that both the numbers visiting 

 any given locality on our coast and the duration 

 of their stay varies widely, not only from year to 

 year, but over longer periods. Local spawning 

 grounds, too, may be abandoned for a term of 

 years — a common occurrence. 69 



The best documented case of local disappear- 

 ances from a previously productive ground took 

 place, as Dr. Huntsman writes us, 60 from the 

 shoals southwest of Grand Manan, whence large 

 herring (previously very plentiful) withdrew in 

 1877, to reappear in 1881 on the Nova Scotia 

 coast between Cape Sable and Digby. Dr. 

 Huntsman has suggested that they had circled 

 the Gulf offshore, for their exodus from the Grand 

 Manan shoals was not accompanied by any coin- 

 cident increase in the catch along the eastern part 

 of the coast of Maine, but rather by the reverse. 61 

 They persisted on the Nova Scotia shore until 

 1890, when they gave out, probably from old age, 

 for the large herring that remained in the Quoddy 

 region also dwindled in numbers as shown by the 

 collapse of the winter fishery there, evidence that 

 this particular body of herring did not receive any 

 significant recruitment after about 1880-1881. 

 It remains to be seen whether large herring will 

 ever reappear in their former plenty on the Grand 

 Manan ground, as they did about 1857 in Massa- 

 chusetts Bay, where the stock had been at a low 

 ebb since 1837; or whether the yearly drain on 

 the population of young herring by the sardine 

 fishery (well started by about 1880) is too great. 



The largest reported catch of herring for the 

 Gulf as a whole for any year since 1928 for which 

 statistics are readily available was 219,131,500 

 pounds taken in 1946, divided as follows: Massa- 

 chusetts, 2,049,000 pounds; Maine, 80,107,400 

 pounds; and the Canadian shores of the Gulf, 

 136,975,100 pounds. The smallest catch was 

 70,519,886 pounds in 1932, divided 5,687,254 

 pounds, 3 1 ,988, 132 pounds, and 32,844,500 pounds, 



» Moore, Rept. U. S. Comm. Fish. (1896), 1898, p. 430. 



•° Based on Canadian fishery statistics. 



•i Earll (Fisheries and Fish. Ind. U. S., sect. 5, vol. 1, 1887, pp. 423, 424) 

 states that the fishery declined near Bois Bubert Island from 1875 to 1880, 

 and that the catch was "considerably below average" at Matlnicus during 

 the 10 years previous to 1879. 



