106 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



wick or of Nova Scotia that border on the Bay 

 of Fundy or on the open Gulf. 88 



The alewife population of the Gulf is much 

 smaller, today, than it was half a century ago. 

 Thus the catch was only about one-half as great 

 for the Bay of Fundy in 1945 and 1946 87 as it had 

 been in 1896, and about one-third as great for 

 Maine (1,224,600 lb.) while the Merrimac River, 

 yielding 472,500 pounds in 1896, yielded less than 

 3,000 pounds in 1945. 88 And though alewives 

 may seem almost incredibly numerous when 

 crowding into some stream, they made but a 

 sparse population, even in their days of greatest 

 plenty, when spread over the coastal waters of 

 our Gulf, as compared to the sea herring. 



Importance. — Alewives are excellent food fish 

 and they are marketed both fresh and salted, and 

 are preferred by many to the sea herring. They 

 are good bait for cod, haddock, and pollock; and 

 their scales commanded a high price for use in the 

 manufacture of artificial pearls for a brief period 

 during the first world war and for a few years 

 afterward. 89 By far the greater part of the catch 

 of alewives is made in the lower reaches of the 

 streams that they enter to spawn, in weirs, in 

 dip nets or in haul seines according to locality. 

 Most of those taken in outside waters (as in 

 Casco and Cape Cod Bays) are either gill netted 

 or are picked up in the fish traps. 



» McKenzie, Kept. Biol. Board Canada (1931) 1932, p. 34. 



87 5,051,100 pounds and 4,517,500 pounds, respectively. 



M The reported catch for Essex County, Massachusetts, in that year was 

 2,700 pounds, only a part of which was from the region of the Merrimac. 



* For details, see Report, Division of Fish and Game, Mass. (1920) 1921, 

 p. 140. 



Blueback Pomolobus aestivalis (Mitchill) 1815 



Glut herring; Summer herring; Blackbelly; 



Ktack 



Jordan and Evermann, 1896-1900, p. 426. 



Description. — Bluebacks and alewives are diffi- 

 cult to distinguish; experienced fishermen who 

 recognize the existence of the two separate fish 

 cannot always tell them apart, so closely do they 

 resemble one another in general appearance. The 

 most obvious external difference between them is 

 that the back of the blueback is definitely blue 

 green, that of the alewife gray green. But this 

 applies only to fresh-caught fish; preserved speci- 

 mens do not differ much in color, or fish that have 

 been on ice for more than a short time. Another 

 external difference is that the eye of the blueback 

 is only about as broad as the distance from front 

 of eye to tip of snout (or slightly broader), but is 

 appreciably broader than that in the alewife; the 

 blueback, too, with body about 3% times as long 

 as deep, is a slightly more slender fish (on the 

 average) than the alewife, and its fins are a little 

 lower, but the two species probably intergrade 

 in both these respects. 



The most dependable distinction between the 

 two (though requiring the use of a knife) is that 

 the lining of the belly cavity is sooty or blackish in 

 the blueback, but pearl gray or pinkish gray in the 

 alewife. We have yet to see a specimen that 

 could not be named as the one or the other on this 

 basis alone, unless so poorly preserved that the 

 original shade of the cavity could no longer be 

 determined. 



Figure 47. — Blueback (Pomolobus aestivalis), Chesapeake Bay region specimen. From Goode. Drawing by H. L. 



Todd. 



