Mackerel Miff rations ; Tunny. 115 



Notwithstanding the above, the mackerel holds high im- 

 portance commercially among our District's fisheries on the 

 south and east Kent coast, but in Essex it is nowhere. 

 The west end of the English Channel is a kind of head- 

 quarters for them. Whence passing eastwards in spring 

 they strike somewhat landwards about Dungeness, and 

 rounding the South Foreland keep northwards towards 

 the Suffolk and Norfolk coasts. Spawning during summer, 

 thereabouts in the North Sea, they appear to return channel- 

 wards during autumn and winter. It is during their migration 

 hither and thither that drift-net, seine and kettle-net fisheries 

 off Kent take place. As, however, these important fisheries are 

 aside from those of our Estuary, we propose to leave them out 

 of the present report, for they more properly belong to the 

 Ramsgate, Folkestone and other stations data.* 



(2.) As to the TUNNY (Orcynus thynnvs), a gigantic 

 mackerel in its way, its fisheries are afar off, namely, in the 

 Mediterranean, though it frequents the Spanish, French and 

 Cornish coasts. Single fish irregularly pay our shores a flying 

 visit, coming, it is presumed, like the mackerel, by way of the 

 south. Most specimens obtained within our Sea Fisheries 

 District have come to grief at the Thames mouth. The 

 following may be cited : In 1801 three were taken off Margate. 

 In 1880 part of the skull of a large one (identified by Buck- 

 land) was got in the trawl of a Margate smack at the N. 

 Foreland. About 1857 one was stranded on Foulness ; still 

 another came ashore there in October, 1897. This one was 

 9 feet long, and as much in circumference, and its weight 

 estimated at 5 to 6 cwt. Its reddish, firm, oily flesh tasted 

 like eel when fried, and skate when boiled, though stringy 

 (Fitch). 



* The most complete history of Mackerel Fishery is that of the N. American 

 Atlantic Coast, U.S. Fish. Commiss. for 1881. Of late the subject of the mackerel's 

 movements in the vicinity of the S.W. of England and Ireland has received atten- 

 tion at the Plymouth Mar. Biol. station. Garstang regards the inacKerel of the 

 Channel and North Sea as a race of fish distinct from the S. and S.W. Irish stock, 

 and that the American mackerel is quite distinct from either. He, Cunningham and 

 Allen agree as to a to and fro movement of the mackerel from the neighbouring deep- 

 sea to the shallower waters, and that our British fish are not migrants from southern 

 climes or far Atlantic, as was formerly supposed to be the case. 



H2 



