146 American Fisheries Society 



worth ten shillings a hundred and the poor fisherman 

 could take from one hundred to three hundred a day. 



The alewife fishery in each town was early made a 

 public town asset, and held for the inhabitants of that 

 town. The fishery was either regulated by the select- 

 men and the "herring committee," or else was sold at 

 auction or private sale to certain individuals for a stated 

 sum with a proviso, e. g. that each inhabitant who so 

 desired should be entitled to purchase one hundred fish 

 at the price of one-half a cent apiece. 



As long as the fish were abundant and the popula- 

 tion small, there was no decline in the fishery, but with 

 the increase in population and the encroachments of 

 civilization the alewife fishery began slowly but steadily 

 to decline until at the present time only a remnant of the 

 former abundance remains. It is safe to say that, taken 

 as a whole, the alewife fishery has deteriorated approxi- 

 mately 75% from the original condition, and that there 

 are only a few streams in Massachusetts which produce 

 anywhere near their normal yield. 



The causes of the decline are as follows: 



(1) Over- fishing. — In spite of the laws restricting the 

 time of taking the fish to certain days, little judgment 

 was used by the men in charge of the fisheries, as too 

 many alewives were taken and too few allowed to pass 

 the spawning grounds. An instance of this short-sight- 

 edness is shown by the following case where on one 

 stream which passed through three towns the time of 

 fishing was regulated to three days a week, but it was 

 so arranged that the fish were taken at places and times 

 in the week covering every day for the reason that each 

 town had three different days for catching the fish. Any 

 fish that succeeded in getting by the first town would 

 likely be taken in their passage through the second town, 

 and if not taken there the escaping survivors almost cer- 

 tainly met their fate in the third town. 



(2) Dams. — Obstructions to the streams by dams pre- 

 vented the passage of fish to the spawning grounds. In 

 all cases the laws explicitly stated that satisfactory pas- 



