show the distribution of total fishing 

 effort —' . It may be seen that the grounds 

 most heavily exploited were (1) off Cape 

 Lookout, (2) Chesapeake Bay, (3) along the 

 coasts of Maryland, Delaware, cind New Jer- 

 sey, (4) Delaware Bay, (5) southern Long 

 Islcind, and (6) Massachusetts Bay. Of the 

 total number of sets calculated from the 

 logbook data (25,652), about one- third was 

 made in those areas. 



The 1955 Purse-Seine Fishery 



A record catch of 685,000 tons of 

 Atlantic menhaden was landed by the purse- 

 seine fishery in 1955. The phenomenally 

 high catches in Chesapeake Bay and the 

 excellent catches in the North and Middle 

 Atlantic areas, together with the increased 

 yield of the fall and early winter fishery 

 in North Carolina, were mainly 

 responsible for the continued 

 upward trend in production 

 which had its beginning in 

 1952. In contrast to the high 

 levels of abundance in those 

 areas, the summer purse-seine 

 catch in the South Atlemtic 

 Area, particularly in Florida, 

 was generally poor. 



The first purse-seine 

 catches of the 1955 season were 

 made in late March when two 



vessels encountered scattered schools south 

 of Jacksonville, Fla. Additional vessels 

 entered the fishery in that area in April. 

 By mid-May, catches were sporadic in Florida 

 waters, and the vessels moved farther north- 

 ward. The plant at Yonges Island, S. C, 

 was opened in late May; however, fishing in 

 the area continued to be poor through the 

 summer, and two of the plants closed in 

 August. A small influx of fish into the 

 eirea in the fall enabled one plant to oper- 

 ate until early December. 



In late April several large schools of 

 fish were sighted along the North Carolina 

 coast, and subsequent fishing at Southport 

 and Beaufort was good until mid-July. Tro- 

 pical cyclones interrupted operations in Au- 

 gust, and only scattered landings were made 

 during the remainder of the summer season. 



_3/ Logbook information was 

 available from over 60 

 percent of the daily vessel 

 landings recorded in pro- 

 cessing plant records. 

 Because vessels from a 

 given plant locality nor- 

 mally operate as a fleet, 

 the number and location of 

 sets recorded by a szunple 

 of the fleet was used in 

 calculating total fishing 

 effort for each fleet. 

 This was accomplished by 

 multiplying the number of 

 sets recorded by the sample 

 fleet (by unit areas) by 

 the ratio of the total 

 number of daily vessel 

 landings to the number of 

 daily landings recorded 

 for the Scunple fleet. 



I ' I I I I I ' I I 1 ' I ■ 



NUMBER OF SETS 



1-9 



10-24 



25-49 X 



50-99 * 



100-199 • 

 200 ond over I 



WW 



Figure 5. --Distribution of fishing effort in the South Atlantic Area, 1955. 



