35 



200 - 300 foreign factory trawlers was operating off Cape Cod continually. 



Initially directing fisheries at species of little traditional domestic 



value, it was inevitable that a good year-class of a popular domestic species 



would attract a pulse fishing effort, as occurred in the haddock fishery in 



1965. 



Haddock had long served as a mainstay of the large Boston trawler fleet; 



for decades prior to 1965, New England fishermen had produced an average of 



fifty thousand tons a year. 



This total catch was considered by fishery researchers to approxi- 

 mate the maximum sustainable yield. . .Although extensive research by 

 American scientists indicated that recruitment of juvenile haddock 

 into an adult crop fluctuates widely from year to year, concern grew 

 in the late 1950s and the early 19603 when a number of spawning 

 failures were observed. .. In response to the spawning failures, the 

 New England haddock fishery apparently reduced its harvest to a level 

 approximating the annual recruitment of adult haddock. 



"When successful spawning seasons did occur in 1962 and 1963 they pro- 

 duced two large year-classes of haddock that would lead to a large 

 natural increase in the adult crop of haddock three years later in 

 1965 and 1966 when the juveniles had matured. These year-classes 

 might well have sustained the New England haddock fishery well into 

 the 1970s and at the same time provided sufficient breeding stocks 

 to proprogate future generations of haddock. But in anticipation of 

 the large schools of haddock that their research vessels reported, 

 the Soviet fleet, estimated to number as many as 300 vessels, de- 

 ployed its vessels to catch haddock in 1965 and 1966. "(42) 



Landings leapt from sixty thousand tons in 1963 to one hundred fifty- 

 five thousand tons in 1965 and one hundred twenty-six thousand tons in 1966, 

 primarily due to the Soviet efforts. By 1969, only twenty-five thousand tons 

 were landed; in 1974 landings were one-eighteenth the average catch prior 

 to 1965. Today the New England haddock fishery hardly exists, for, in 

 addition to the overfishing of 1965 and 1966, there occurred a series of 

 year-class failures that virtually decimated the stock. 



