188 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 
25pounds. Not unfrequently 500 or 1,000 of them are taken in a single night in one 
of the pounds, but the. people make no use of them and consider them valueless 
They sell the fish weighing 25 pounds for 25 cents. It is a coarse fish and very dark 
meat, but still it is a food resource when other fish are not taken. These fish are found 
in the Mediterranean, where they are very much looked after and bring very good 
prices, they being specially salted and put up in oil. The American tunny is undis- 
tinguishable from the European, though efforts have been made to separate them. 
Q. The pound-fishing which has come into general use in the southern part of New 
England, what is its effect on the supply of fish ?—A. That is a question which I 
think will require a longer period of years than we have had for its definite deter- 
mination. In 1871 I made my first inquiries into these pounds, and satisfied myself 
then that they must have a positive influence upon the abundance of fish, in view of 
the concurrent enormous destruction of bluefish. I considered the bluefish was the 
greatest agency in the destruction of our food-fishes. Its relation to scup and sque- 
teague has long been established—that when bluefish are abundant the other fish are 
rare, and the moment bluefish diminish the other fish become enormously common. 
The squeteague in 1862 was unknown as a fish east of the waters of New Jersey ex- 
cept in small numbers, and was not found in Martha’s Vineyard or Buzzard’s Bay. 
In 1872, ten years subsequently, so plentiful were they that I know myself of 5,000 
fish being taken at a single haul, averaging five pounds each fish. The bluefish then 
began to diminish, and from that time were much less abundant than in 1850 or 1860. 
Those pounds and the bluefish together I considered produced the decrease in the 
abundance of scup, sea bass, and tautog that has been so much complained of. I 
urged very strongly, and I still maintain my view, on the legislatures of Massachu- 
setts and Rhode Island the propriety of exercising some sort of restriction upon the 
indiscriminate use of this apparatus. I recommend that one day and two nights, 
that is, from Saturday night, or, if possible, from Friday night till Monday morning, 
should be established as a close time during which those fish should not be taken by 
any of those devices, thus giving the fish a chance to get into the spawning-grounds 
inshore, thereby securing their perpetuity. 
I was quite satisfied in my own mind that unless something of this kind was done 
very serious results would happen. Very much to my disgust, I must admit, the next 
year, even with all the abundance of those engines, the young scup came in in quan- 
tities so great as to exceed anything the oldest fishermen remembered, and thousands 
and tens of thousands of barrels of what was called dollarscup were sold. They were 
so thick in the pounds and so mixed with the fish that the owners could scarcely pick 
out the marketable fish, and consequently had to let large portions of the contents of 
the pounds go away. Since then scup has been very much more abundant than it 
was when I wrote my book and report. 
Q. How do you account for this great increase ?—A. I think those were scup, be- 
longing to further south, which took a northern trip to northern waters and estab- 
lished themselves there. But I do urge in the most earnest manner the propriety of 7 
some restriction being placed on the pounds. Ihave not changed my views, although 
the evil has not arrived as I thought it would, and there are indications of some other 
agency; whether it be the diminution of the bluefish which permits the secup to in- 
crease or not I cannot say. 
Q. Is it true the bluefish is diminishing ?—A. It is not by any means so abundant as 
it was, very much to the regret of all people who catch them, either for market or for 
sport. 
Q. Can youremember the time when there was no bluefish on the American coats I 
A. Icannot. I know we have the record of the fact, and I know many persons who 
can remember if. Bluefish was absent from the American coast for sixty years, during © 
which time there was not a single bluefish to be found on the coast. 
Q. You think the pounds should be dealt with as a matter for regulation and not 
for banishment?—A, I don’t think the market would be amply supplied without 

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