XXVIII.-SPANISH MACKEREL-INVESTIGATIONS AT CHERRY- 

 STONE, VA., DURING THE SUMMER OF 1881. 



Bv Marshall McDonald. 



The Spanish mackerel is the most valuable species of the salt- water 

 fish taken in the Chesapeake Bay. It enters the capes in large schools 

 about the 1st of June, each year, and is found in the bay during the 

 whole summer, being taken in large quantities by the pounds on the 

 eastern sliores of Virginia, and at New Point, on the western shore, and 

 in the middle ground of the Chesapeake, off' Tangier Island, by gill- 

 net fishermen. Until the investigations of Col. M. McDonald and Mr. 

 E. E. Earll, which were conducted at New Point during the summer of 

 1880, it was not known that this species spawned in the Chesapeake. 

 As soon as the fact was announced to the Commissioner he, ai)preci- 

 ating the importance of the discovery, later in the season sent Mr. R. 

 E. Earll to the vicinity of Crisfield, Md., with suitable apparatus t^de- 

 termine the possibility of obtaining eggs in large numbers, and to study 

 the methods and apparatus of hatching adapted to them. Mr. Earll was 

 able to report, as the result of his investigation, that the eggs could be 

 obtained in vast quantities, and could be hatched readily by methods 

 requiring little apparatus or attention on the part of the observer. The 

 result of Mr. Earll's investigations, and of cotemporaneous investiga- 

 tions conducted upon the western shore by the steamer Lookout, have 

 already appeared in the official publications of the Fish Commission. 



The following season (1881) it was determined to see what could be 

 done in the way of the artificial proi)agation of this species on a large 

 scale. Accordingly, after the close of the shad hatcliing, the steamer 

 Fish Hawk, in charge of Lieut. Z. L. Tanner, was sent to Cherrystone, 

 on the eastern shore of Virginia, to estabhsh a station there ; Cherry- 

 stone being selected on account of its convenience to the large pounds 

 on the bay shore between that point and Cai)e Charles, in which the 

 larger proportion of the catch of Spanish mackerel in the Chesapeake 

 Bay is taken. It being necessary to detach the Fish Hawk for summer 

 work along the coast, I proceeded, by the direction of the Commissioner, 

 to Cherrystone, in July, 1881, witli instructions to establish there a shore 

 station, and to continue the study of methods and apparatus as long as 

 material for the i)urpose could be obtained. 



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