212 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



Analyses from year to year of the relative pro- 

 portions of fish of different ages in the catch 89 

 show, too, that our offshore banks may receive as 

 much as 30 times as many fry in a good year as in 

 the average for a run of years, and as much as 

 60 times as many as in the poorest years. 



One essential for a good year class of haddock, 

 perhaps the chief essential, is that large numbers 

 of larvae shall not only be hatched and survive 

 until old enough to take to bottom, but shall 

 remain in the area in general, to take to bottom 

 there, as happened in 1931, and not drift else- 

 where. Conversely, a poor brood automatically 

 ensues if the circulation of the water is such that 

 a large proportion of the larvae drifts away, as 

 happened in 1932, when so many of them drifted 

 off Georges Bank altogether, to be lost perma- 

 nently to the local population, that the success of 

 that year class was seriously affected." Herrington 

 has also suggested that in years when large fish 

 are the most plentiful the resulting competition 

 for the supply of available food makes conditions 

 difficult for the survival and growth of the young 

 fry. Evidence is that the "largest spawning stocks 

 have almost invariably yielded the leanest year 

 classes 3 years later, and the poorer spawning 

 stocks have done much better." 91 No doubt a 

 combination of various other factors helps to 

 determine whether any particular year class shall 

 be plentiful or tbe reverse. But the relative im- 

 portance of these factors has not yet been evalu- 

 ated for our haddock. 



The incidence of a good brood in any particular 

 year, or the reverse, shows up in the commercial 

 catch 2 years later; i. e., when the young fish first 

 reach market size in significant numbers. And it 

 is now well established, for both sides of the 

 Atlantic, 92 that the differences in the numbers of 

 fry reared in different years are the chief cause for 

 the short term fluctuations in the catches that are 

 so characteristic of the haddock fishery. 



Our reason for emphasizing the qualification 

 "short term" in this connection is that the situa- 

 tion is complicated by the unhappy fact that the 



haddock populations of Georges and Browns 

 Banks have been seriously reduced by the fishery. 



Commercial importance and effects oj the fishery. — 

 The haddock was once much less in favor than 

 the cod. But the expansion of the fresh-fish 

 trade 93 brought an increasing acceptance of 

 haddock on the market because of their good 

 keeping qualities and convenient size for the 

 table. In 1919 the Gulf of Maine, inshore and 

 offshore combined, yielded something like 85 

 million pounds of haddock to United States and 

 Canadian fishermen. And the development of the 

 filleting and packaging of fresh and frozen haddock 

 soon brought so great an increase, both in the 

 demand and in the intensity of the fishery, that 

 some 206 million pounds were caught in 1929 from 

 the New England population, with some 17 

 million pounds more from the Nova Scotian popu- 

 lation on Browns Bank, off western Nova Scotia, 

 and in the Nova Scotian side of the Bay of 

 Fundy, making a total of at least 223-224 million 

 pounds from the Gulf of Maine as a whole, 

 corresponding to perhaps 60 to 70 million indi- 

 vidual fish. 



This, however, was the high point, for trawlers 

 working on Georges during the five years, 1930- 

 1934, "averaged scarcely one-third as much had- 

 dock per day as during the previous five years," 9 * 

 while the Gulf of Maine catch as a whole had 

 fallen by 1934 and 1935 to only about one-quarter 

 of what it had been in 1929. 95 



Since then, down to 1947 (most recent market 

 year for which we have seen the returns), the 

 yearly yield of market-size haddock from the 

 New England population has varied between 

 about one-third to one-half as great, and about 

 two-thirds as great as it was in 1929, to judge 

 from the landings in the major New England 

 ports, which -form at least 90 percent of the total 

 take from this population. 96 



A recent estimate is that there were only about 

 one third as many haddock on Georges Bank in 



88 From unpublished data for Georges Bank and the South Channel area 

 supplied by Howard A. Schuck. 



•° For details, see Watford's (Bull. U. S. Bur. Fish., vol. 49, Bull. 29, 1938) 

 very interesting study of the drift of the Georges Bank eggs and larvae in 

 these two years. 



»' Tians. 9th North American Wildlife Conference, 1944, p. 260. 



" See especially Thompson's studies for Iceland (Fisheries Scotland, Sci. 

 Invest. [1928], No. 6, 1929), and Raitt's for the North Sea (Journal du Conseil, 

 Cons. Internat. Explor. Mer, vol. 11, No. 2, 1936, p. 211). 



M Fish that are iced at sea, not salted. 



" Herrington, Fishery Circular No. 23, XJ. S. Bur. Fish., 1936, p. 9. 



•' About 78 million to 80 million pounds in 1934, judging from the landings 

 at Portland, Boston, and Gloucester from within the Gulf (which usually 

 run about ?4-}i of the total catch in the Gulf by United States and Canadian 

 vessels combined) plus perhaps 4 million to 5 million pounds taken by 

 Canadian fishermen off western Nova Scotia and in the Bay of Fundy. 



M For tabulations of the total catches of haddock in the western Atlantio 

 by Canadian and United States vessels, 1880-1927, see Needier, Contrib. 

 No. 2, North American Council on Fish. Investigations, Ottawa, 1929, 13 

 pp., also Rept. U. S. Comm. Fish. (1930) 1930, App. 2, pp. 27-40. 



