2008 AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 



Q. You never knew them before 1847? A. Never north of Cape Cod. 



Q. Don't they destroy the squid ? A. They were very destructive to 

 the squid. They depopulated the bay of almost all the fish there was 

 there. Not only that, but they drove the people off away from the vil- 

 lages and from their homes, if I may say so. I was living at Long Point, 

 Povincetown, engaged in the mackerel fisheries, as I stated yesterday. 

 We prosecuted that fishery and supported our families, and we lived in 

 what was considered comfortable circumstances, according to a fisher- 

 man's idea, but in 1847 this bluefish made its appearance. I went out one 

 night with a boy and got 1,000 mackerel, which was considered a very 

 good night's work. Next night when I came to haul in the nets I sup- 

 posed I was going to get a good haul, and to my suprise and disappoint- 

 ment I found two great, long, savage-looking bluefish and some dozen or 

 so of mackerel. Now, the mackerel all went away, and that drove them 

 off. We had 270 of a population on that point, and we moved away 

 family after family. 



Q. That was the result of the destruction of the fishery. Now they 

 have come there every year since ? A. Yes. The squid have gradually 

 disappeared year after year. 



Q. Is it not your opinion A. I was going on to say that the squid 



diminished and became less and less year after year until 1867. I did 

 not see a single specimen for the whole summer that I investigated more 

 particularly than any other year. 



Q. And the squid have come back? A. Yes : but they are now going 

 away again. 



Q. Have the bluefish not driven them away again? A. I do not 

 know about driving them away. The bluefish eat them as quick as they 

 can get hold of them. They will probably drive them away. 



Q. Is it not likely that the squid would be very plentiful ? A. They 

 would be more so than they are if there were no bluefish ; there was 

 always squid in my boyhood. 



Q. In your opinion it necessarily follows that the bluefish have driven 

 them away ? A. They have had a great effect upon them. 



Q. Haven't you stated so in some of your lectures or in addresses in 

 the Massachusetts legislature ? A. Probably I did. It was true. 



Q. You used these words I am now quoting from some remarks I 

 think you made in relation to this matter in the senate chamber on the 

 19th April, 1870. You say this : 



Bnt the great change that has taken place in our fisheries has been caused by the 

 return of the bluefish. This species was abundant on our coast many years ago.* We 

 are informed that in a journal of the first settlement of the island of Nantucket, written 

 by Zacheus Macy, 1792, and contained in the Massachusetts Historical Collection, he 

 says a great pestilence attacked the Indians of that island in 1763 and 1765, and that 

 *, the whole number, 222 died. In that year, he says, the bluefish disappeared, 

 and I have no knowledge of a specimen being seen here 'for more than 70 years. We 

 are informed that they are found in other localities. They are said to occur on the 

 western coast of Africa, around the island of Madagascar, and also at Australia. If 

 so, they are found over a wider geographical range than any other species with which 

 I am acquainted, inhabiting the waters in both the torrid and temperate zones. After 

 an absence of so many years they returned, as appeared in evidence before the com- 

 mittee, about IStt, along the shores south of Cape Cod. They did not come north of 

 the cape so as to affect our fisheries until 1847, when they appeared in vast abundance 



engaged in the net fishery. The blnefish aftected our fishery so much that the people 

 were obliged to leave the place. Family after family moved away, until every one 

 left, leaving that locality, which is now a desolate, barren, and sandy waste. 



