[81] HISTORY OF THE MACKEREL FISHERY. 



age caught annually, of which number about 70,000 centners, at a 

 value of from 000,000 to 700,000 crowns, are exported. The government 

 is well aware of the danger threatening the public weal, and has con- 

 sequently taken every possible measure in order to prevent such dis- 

 astrous results as the loss by the Norwegian fishermen of the mack- 

 erel fishery. A most accurate description of the nets used by the Amer- 

 icans has been printed, and, with a great number of nets of this kind, 

 made to order by the net manufactory at Bergen, distributed among the 

 fishing population. Models of the different sorts of the fast-sailing 

 American boats have also been obtained through the Norwegian con- 

 sul at Gloucester, Massachusetts, direct from the manufacturers of such 

 boats. The well-known industry and activity of the Norwegian fisher- 

 men, combined with the efforts of the government, will, no doubt, en- 

 able them not only successfully to hold, but to improve, their own pros- 

 pects as regards the mackerel fishery by the timely adoption of the 

 American methods and arrangements for fishing."* 



The venture was, however, not a successful one. On his return home 

 Captain Markurson stated that he had been unable to use the seine 

 advantageously owing to the fact that the mackerel did not in those 

 waters school together in large bodies as they do along the New Eng- 

 land shores. 



D.— THE MACREEEL HOOK FISHERY. 



The mackerel fishery at the time of its highest development, from 

 1820 to 1870, was carried on almost exclusively by the use of little 

 hooks with heavily weighted shanks, known as "mackerel jigs." For 

 many years there were from 000 to 000 vessels, chiefly from Cape Cod 

 and northward, engaged in this fishery; and in the year 18.il the total 

 amount of mackerel salted in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts 

 was 450,000 barrels. 



As will be seen by an examination of the diagram, showing the yield 

 in the mackerel fishery from 1804 to 1881, elsewhere published in this 

 report, the quantity of fish taken from year to year has been extremely 

 variable, but has at no other time approached the enormous quantity 

 on record for the years 1835 and 1881. 



The jig has now been almost entirely superseded by the purse-seine, 

 and this radical change in the method of catching mackerel has caused 

 the desertion, by the mackerel fleet, of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and 

 the practical futility — to benefit our fishermen — of the fishery clauses of 

 the Treaty of Washington. All attempts, with a very few exceptions, to 

 use the purse seine in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence have been failures. 



In 1880 the schooner "Alice," of Swan's Island, caught 700 barrels by 

 use of the purse-seine in the gulf, but not 10 per cent, of the other 

 vessels which visited this region, then or within the four or five previous 

 years, paid their expenses. 



*Cape Aim Advertiser, August i>, 1878. 



