Table 1. — Percentages of Atlantic menhaden captured by purse seines in areas other than 



where ports were located. 



In this report the catch, in metric tons and in es- 

 timated milHons of fish, is credited to the area in 

 which the plants are located, even though the fish 

 may have been caught in another area. The catch is 

 reported this way because: 1) except for some years 

 when catches for ports in the North and Middle 

 Atlantic were exceptionally small, fish caught outside 

 an area in which a plant is located constitute only a 

 small percentage of the total catch (Table 1); 2) the 

 area in which catches are made cannot always be 

 identified; and 3) the units of fishing effort (vessel 

 weeks) can be associated only with the total catch 

 landed at a plant. 



Vessels fished mainly in the area in which the plant 

 was located, occasionally in adjacent areas, but never 

 in areas not adjacent. Chesapeake Bay vessels oc- 

 casionally fished in the Middle Atlantic; Wildwood 

 and Lewes vessels sometimes fished in a portion of the 

 coast included in the Chesapeake Bay area. Port 

 Monmouth vessels often fished in the western end of 

 Long Island Sound. Amagansett vessels fishing off the 

 northern New Jersey coast accounted for the fish 

 caught outside the North Atlantic. In some years after 

 1963, the catch landed at Chesapeake Bay plants in 

 November included migrating fish caught either off 

 the mouth of the bay or in North Carolina waters. 

 Although these catches were more closely associated 

 with the North Carolina fall fishery, there was no way 



of identifying them. No fish landed in the South 

 Atlantic or North Carolina fall fishery were taken in 

 other areas. 



Total landings dropped sharply in 1963 as the 

 strong 1958 year class phased out of the fishery, and 

 plants in the North and Middle Atlantic closed or 

 reduced their amount of fishing (Table 2). After 

 another sharp drop in 1964 to 269,000 metric tons, 

 landings in the following years fluctuated between 

 162,000 and 273,000 metric tons. 



The estimated total number of actual fish landed is 

 shown for all areas combined and for each area, in- 

 dividually (Tables 3-8). For all areas combined, it 

 continued to decline after 1962, reaching a low of 

 868.16 million in 1969 (Table 3). It increased to 

 1,399.87 million in 1970, partly as a result of a fairly 

 strong 1969 year class, but declined again in 1971. 

 Fish older than age 2 continued to decrease after 1962 

 as the strong 1958 year class phased out of the fishery 

 and as the catches from the North and Middle Atlan- 

 tic and the North Carolina fall fishery dwindled. 



FISHING EFFORT 



Because observed effort and effective effort are 

 often confused, I wish to stress that in this report 

 observed effort is the basis for all discussions of catch, 

 effort, and catch per unit of effort. In the Atlantic 

 menhaden fishery the observed unit of effort, the 



