D2 U. S. BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
because a large share of the individual fishermen from whom the 
estimates are obtained do not keep accurate records. In addition to 
this disadvantage, the annual canvass totals do not show either the 
season at which the catch was made, or the banks from which it was 
derived. 
In cooperation with the Division of Fishery Industries and other 
members of the North Atlantic staff, an attempt has been made to 
encourage the New England States to install systems of collecting 
more complete and accurate statistics than those now available. One 
of the best systems for collecting such statistics is the use of triplicate 
receipt books by every fish buyer, so that a copy of each purchase 
showing the weighed-out poundage of every trip is available to the 
dealer, the fisherman, and the State. Such a system has been in 
use in Califor nia since 1915 and has been eminently successful. 
The State of Maine inaugurated such a system on January 1, 
1939, and the Bureau is aiding in getting it under way. Other New 
England States also are becoming more interested i in obtaining better 
statistics of their fisheries, and ‘the Bureau is encouraging and co- 
operating in the installation of such systems. 
The fact that a fair share of the New England groundfish catelt 
not landed at the three principal ports is caught j in the inshore areas 
(as opposed to the large quantities from the offshore banks landed 
at the three ports) is shown by a preliminary analysis of the annual 
canvass vessel schedules which has revealed a large fleet of small 
vessels operating largely in shallow, inshore waters, and fishing 
primarily for flounders. These small flounder vessels are most nu- 
merous south of Cape Cod, although some land at Boston and 
Gloucester and along the coast of Maine. The catches of these 
smaller, inshore vessels will be analyzed by the flounder investigation 
as they will necessarily have to be correlated with the life-history 
findings. 
Com: position of the fishing fleet—The fishing vessels have under- 
gone many changes in size, power, and type. “As explained above, 
these changes i in the number and type of the fishing vessels must be 
known if one is to judge either the relative difference in annual 
fishing effort or the potential fishing effort that can be unleashed in 
any particular direction whenever economic conditions warrant. 
Furthermore, without knowledge of the total fishing effort, it is not 
safe to assume that the relative. catch from year to year of a partic- 
ular amount of fishing effort is not influenced by differences in the 
amount of competition with other vessels fishing the same grounds. 
Since 1928, the weigh-out schedules for vessels landing at the 
three principal New England ports have given the type of gear used 
in making each catch. “These data (available for over 700 vessels) 
are being analyzed to show the number of vessels of each size and 
type of gear that fished during each month over this period of 11 
years A preliminary tabulation of a few of the years during which 
New Eneland annual canvass data are available, showed over 260 
additional vessels that landed only at minor New England ports. 
These latter vesels were chiefly small inshore flounder trawlers and 
gill-net boats, although a few fair-sized vessels are included from 
Provincetown and New Bedford. 
