STRIPED BASS 

 AMERICAN LOBSTER 



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UNCLASSIFIED 



INDUSTRIAL FISHES 

 (NOTE SCALE CHANGE) 



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1680 90 1900 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 



SUMMER FLOUNDER 



MENHADEN 

 (NOTE ORDER - OF- 

 MAGNITUDE 

 SCALE CHANGE) 



BLACK SEA BASS 

 SEA SCALLOP 



ATLANTIC MACKEREL 

 ^OFT CLAM 



RED HAKE 



ATLANTIC HERRING 



YELLOWTAIL FLOUNDER 



SQUIDS 



BLUE CRAB 



WINTER FLOUNDER 



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ATLANTIC COD 



SILVER HAKE 



AMERICAN SHAD 



BLUEFISH 

 ALEWIEE 



AMERICAN OYSTER 



American fishery, opinion is divided as to how bad things 

 are. Substantial investment is being made in new domes- 

 tic fishing vessels, and some experienced observers point 

 out that energetic and hardworking fishermen are doing 

 well (Townes 1975). They attributed most of this success 

 to the Point Judith Fishermen's Cooperative and to the 

 rise of Newport as a trawler port. Thus, the healthy con- 

 ditions described refer largely to the otter trawl in- 

 dustry. Some other fisheries in Rhode Island appear to be 

 much less healthy. The hard clam industry, for example, 

 has declined by more than 80% from peak landings of 

 about 2,300 metric tons of meats (5 million pounds) in 

 19.5.5 to less than 400 metric tons (less than 850,000 

 pounds) in 1974. Olsen and Stevenson (1975) said that 

 the hard clam resource is large and underutilized but 

 also that if present trends in the fishery continue the har- 

 vest will continue to decline. The reasons for this ap- 

 parent contradiction are not entirely clear. Certainly 

 there is no scarcity of markets for hard clam if the up- 

 ward trend in production from New York waters is any 

 criterion. In this respect the commercial fishing industry 

 is in better condition in the New York Bight area (es- 

 pecially New York State) than in Rhode Island. 



The major domestic problems of commercial fisheries 

 in the New York Bight area are sociopolitical and 

 economic, aggravated by wide fluctuations in abun- 

 dance of individual resources from natural causes. To a 

 degree the industry has been able to cope with resource 

 fluctuations by shifting from one species to another and 

 by using different methods of fishing. An outstanding ex- 

 ample of changes in fishing strategy in both states was 

 the virtual replacement of fixed pound nets in the shore 

 zone by more flexible otter trawls (Knapp in press) in the 

 past 40 yr. This development not only allowed fishermen 

 to follow the major species during their seasonal mi- 

 grations, but also lengthened the fishing season from 

 about 6 mo to a full year. This improvement in ef- 

 ficiency may have contributed to declining catches of 

 some species by overfishing those resources. Develop- 

 ment of a domestic trawl fishery proved to be an 

 evolutionary trend in fishing strategy which eventually 

 was adopted by much more efficient and massive foreign 

 fleets in the 1960s, to the detriment of some domestic 

 fisheries in the New York Bight area, including some 

 recreational fisheries. 



Domestic fishermen in the area have been han- 

 dicapped by restrictive state laws, usually justified as 

 conservation measures, but in reality serving only to per- 

 petuate inefficiency and increase the cost of locating and 

 catching fishes and shellfishes. Some of this legislation 

 has been passed at the insistence of recreational fisher- 

 men, who want improved access to certain living 

 resources and a greater share of the catch (Ginter 1974a, 

 b). This question of who gets the catch has been pushed 

 to extremes in repeated attempts in both states to 

 declare striped bass a game fish and prohibit completely 

 commercial fishing for that species. The rationale behind 



Figure 43. — Historic landings of major species in the 

 New York Bight area (New York and New Jersey). 



47 



