FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



331 



whole body of Gulf of Maine, Nova Scotian, and 

 Gulf of St. Lawrence mackerel have withdrawn 

 thence by the end of December at the latest, 

 except for odd stragglers. And when they do de- 

 part, they must sink at once to lower levels in the 

 water, for schools are never sighted on their jour- 

 ney offshore and southward; they simply drop out 

 of sight. 



Abundance.- — It has been common knowledge 

 since early colonial days that mackerel fluctuate 

 widely in abundance in our Gulf from year to year, 

 perhaps more widely than any of our other im- 

 portant food fishes, with periods of great abun- 

 dance alternating with terms of scarcity, or of 

 almost total absence. In good years the fish may 

 appear in almost unbelievable numbers; schools or 

 associations of schools, miles in length, are re- 

 ported; aud it is common to see 50 or more sep- 

 arate bodies of fish from the masthead at one time. 

 Mackerel, in short, seem to be everywhere, and a 

 tremendous catch is made. But perhaps only an 

 odd school will be seen here and there the next 

 year, and the fishery will be a flat failure. 



The period from 1825 to 1835 was one of abun- 

 dance. In 1831, for example, more than 380 

 thousand barrels (76 million pounds) of salt mack- 

 erel (in those days most of them were salted) were 

 landed in Massachusetts ports. But mackerel 

 were scarce for the next 8 years (1837^45), only 

 50,000 barrels being landed in Massachusetts in 

 1840. The Massachusetts catch then fluctuated 

 violently from 1851, when the landings rose once 

 more to 348,000 barrels, down to 1879. The fleet 

 brought in something like 294 million fish from 

 Nova Scotian and United States waters combined 

 in 1880. And this introduced a period of extraor- 

 dinary abundance, culminating in 1885 when the 

 catch reached the enormous total of 500,000 barrels 

 (100,000,000 pounds). But this was followed in 

 its turn by a decline so extreme, so widespread, 

 so calamitous to the fishing interests, and so long 

 continued, that the catch was only about 3,400 

 barrels (equivalent to 582,800 pounds of fresh fish) 

 for the entire coast of the United States in 1910 

 (when the stock of mackerel fell to its lowest ebb) 

 with almost none reported in Massachusetts Bay 

 or along the Maine coast. 



Mackerel then increased again in numbers; 

 slowly at first, then more rapidly, as appears from 

 the fact that the catch for the Gulf of Maine and 

 for the banks at its mouth was about four times as 



great in 1911 (about 2% million pounds) as it had 

 been the year before, rising to about 4% million 

 pounds in 1912, 5 million in 1913, 7% million in 

 1914, to something more than 11 million in 1915, 

 and 16 to 16K million each for 1916 and 1917. 

 But this period of multiplication fell far short of 

 equaling the banner years of the 1880's. And the 

 catches fell off again so rapidly after 1917 that 

 the Gulf of Maine yield for 1919 64 was only about 

 one-quarter as great as it had been in 1917. 

 Although 1920 saw some slight recovery, 1921 

 (with a local catch of only about 1 million pounds) 

 proved the worst mackerel season for our Gulf 

 since 1910. The stock then built up enough 

 (following the familiar seesaw pattern) for the 

 Gulf to yield about 25 million pounds of mackerel 

 in 1925. Since that time down to 1946, the Gulf 

 of Maine catch has ranged between a low of about 

 20 million pounds (1937) and a high of about 59 

 million (1932). Thus the catch of mackerel in 

 our Gulf may be 50 to 100 times as great in a good 

 year as in a poor. The average Gulf of Maine 

 catch for the period 1933-1946 was about 37 

 million pounds, yearly. 



Various far-fetched explanations have been 

 proposed for these astounding ups and downs in 

 the catches from year to year, such as that the 

 fish have gone across to Europe; have sunk; or 

 have been driven away or killed off by the use 

 of the purse seine. Actually, these changes re- 

 flect the ups and downs in the numbers of the fish 

 that are in existence from year to year. Mack- 

 erel, in short, were extremely plentiful in 1885, 

 very scarce in 1910, moderately plentiful in 1916 

 and 1917, very scarce again in 1921, and they have 

 been moderately plentiful since about 1925, but 

 probably not so plentiful as they were in the 

 1880's. 65 



It has long been known for the herring and for 

 some other species that the prime factor in deter- 

 mining the abundance of the fish is the comparative 

 success of reproduction from year to year, years 

 favorable to the production and survival of 

 larvae presaging several seasons of abundance, or 

 vice-versa. And comparison of the relative pro- 

 portions of mackerel of different sizes (that is, of 

 different ages) in the total catches from year to 

 year has shown that this is equally true of the 



•' In 1919, 4,091.345 pounds. 



« See especially, Sette, U. 8. Bur. Fish., Fishery Circular No. 4, 1931. 



