[13] HISTORY OF THE MACKEREL FISHERY. 



fluenced by the direction and force of the prevailing winds while the 

 fish are performing their northerly migration. He has generally found, 

 he says, that when there has been a continuance of strong northerly 

 winds about the last of May and early in June, the season at which the 

 mackerel are passing the shoals of Nantucket and George's Bank, that 

 the schools have taken a southerly track, passing to the southward of 

 George's Shoals and continuing on in an easterly direction to the coast 

 of Nova Scotia, and thence to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. 



When southerly winds or calms prevail at that season the mackerel 

 are carried into the waters of the Gulf of Maine, and in consequence 

 are much pleutier off the New England coast than in the Saint Law- 

 rence Gulf. 



On this theory Captain Joyce bases his actions in cruising for mack- 

 erel, always fishing off the New England shores when southerly winds 

 have predominated in the spring, and going to the Saint Lawrence if 

 northerly winds have been exceptionally strong and continuous about 

 the last of May. 



The movements of the fish, as already stated, season by season, are 

 quite uucer'uiu, sometimes being very abundant in one direction and 

 sometimes in another, and occasionally, indeed, they may disappear 

 almost entirely for several years, and then reappearing after a consider- 

 able absence. In some years mackerel are very abundant on the coast of 

 the United States and at others rare; the same condition applying to the 

 fish of the Bay of Saint Lawrence. It is not certain, of course, that this 

 indicates an entire absence of the fish from the localities referred to, 

 but they may, possibly for some reason, remain in the depth of the sea, 

 or some change in the character of the animal lile in it, which consti- 

 tutes the food of the fish, may produce the changes referred to. A 

 notable instance of a somewhat permanent change in the migration of 

 the mackerel is found in the entire failure since 187(3 of the mackerel 

 fisheiy in the Bay of Fundy, which, a few years ago, enabled a merchant 

 of Eastport to employ successfully as many as a dozen vessels, especially 

 in Digby and Saint Mary's Bay, but which is now given up. There are 

 indeed faint suggestions, in the early history of the country, of their 

 total absence from the whole coast for several years, as was also the case 

 with the bluefish. 



3. — Abundance. 



The wonderful abundance of mackerel in our waters has always been 

 a subject of remark. Francis Higginson, in his "Journal of his voyage 

 to New England, 1G29," speaks of seeing "many schools of mackerel, 

 infinite multitudes on every side of our ship," off Cape Ann on the 26th 

 of June; and Richard Mather, in his "journal" 1(535, states that the 

 seamen took abundance of mackerel off Menhiggin (Monhegan). In 

 Governor Wmtkrop's journal, speaking of the year 1639, he remarks: 

 "There was such store of exceeding large and fat mackerel upon our 



