22 G EEPOE^^I^X'OMMISSIOXER OF FISH AXD FISHERIES. 



slinll probably have tbem back agaiu as youave having tbeiu upou your 

 coasts. 



In Provincetowii Harbor, from a very early period until the horse- 

 mackerel made its appearance, the fish called "whiting" was immensely 

 abundant. Since the horse mackerel has appeared, they have been 

 gradually driven out, and now a specimen is hardly- ever seen. The 

 horse-mackerel has driven out a great many other kinds of tish, for it is 

 the avowed enemy of every species it ca'u master. These fisli first ap- 

 peared south of Cape Cod about the year 183-!. I was thirty years old 

 before I saw a specimen. Finally they found their way into our harbor, 

 and completely destroyed tlie mackerel tisliery for a time, and even now 

 render it nearly unprofitable. 



If overfishing were possible, it seems to me that we should see some 

 of its results where great changes have taken place in the modes of our 

 fisheries of cod and haddock in jMassachusetts Bay. What is called 

 "trawl-fishing" was first introduced about 1851), and it resulted in the 

 taking of a vast number of fish of these varieties. In consequence of 

 the competition in the business, the Swampscott people petitioned the 

 legislature for a law piohibiting trawl-fishing, on the ground that it 

 would exterminate the haddock. At that time I ]>roved before the legis- 

 lature that haddock was much more abundant than it had been at any 

 previous time, and that I was selling them at 37^ cents per hundred 

 pounds. That fishery has been going on ever since, and the amount 

 taken was greater this last winter than for n)any years ])ast. A fisher- 

 man in a dory fifteen feet long has often brought in as much as 1,800 

 pounds in a single day. Tiiere are eighty boats fishing out of the harbor, 

 and 83,000 pounds have been caught in one day. This increase has 

 taken place in spite of the constant practice of the new mode of fishing, 

 by which twice as many are taken in the same time as formerly. 



Perhaps the committee will ask if I do know of any fish that has 

 diminished whde I have been fishing. I would say that I do. I allude 

 to the halibut. When I was twenty-five or thirty years old I was en- 

 gaged in fishing along the jSTantucket shore, and at that time halibut 

 were much more plentiful than now. Whether the diminution is owing 

 to over-fishing or not I am unable to say. 



In regard to the etiect produced in the way of driving out fishes by 

 emptying impurities into the water, I am inclined to believe that as re- 

 spects ocean waters it would be verytrifiing; in rivers, I think the 

 effect would be considerable. At New Bedford there are works that 

 throw deleterious substances into the water, but the driving away of the 

 fish there was, in my opinion, effected by the destroying of the bait upon 

 which they fed. I presume that fish that had never been in impure 

 water, if they shouhl rush into it suddenly would be much more effected 

 by it than by a gradual fouling of the water. Fish need to be acclimated 

 by degrees to any change of temperature in the water, and it is only by 

 degrees that they can learn to live in impure water. In rivers where 

 there are saw-mills, the sawdust from which is thrown into the water, 

 when the water becomes so charged with it that the gills of fishes are 

 clogged, they must of necessity be driven away. When the Massa- 

 chusetts fishery commissioners were api)ointed, I was applied to to in- 

 vestigate the condition of the river fisheries. It was surprising to me 

 that fish would come in from the broad ocean and pass up these narrow 

 rivers filled with mud and with every possible obstruction, year after 

 year, for the purpose of depositing their spawn. Yet they will invaria- 

 bly return annually to the same stream in spite of all the deleterious 

 substances thrown into it. 



