392 CALIFORNIA PISH AND GAME 



COMMERCIAL FISHERY NOTES 



SUMMER OCEANOGRAPHIC WORK 



The oceanograpliic program of the State Fisheries Laboratory for 

 the summer of 1934 consisted of seven trips on the patrol boat Bluefin 

 in the waters of southern California. The patrol boat Alhacore sta- 

 tioned at Monterey conducted experimental hauls with an otterboard 

 trawl in order to demonstrate the eifectiveness of larger meshed savings 

 gear in taking flatfishes. This was done in addition to keeping up her 

 regular schedule of observations as a part of the hydrobiological survey 

 of Monterey Bay which is being conducted jointly by Stanford Uni- 

 versity and the Division of Fish and Game. 



The first research trip of the Bluefin this season was the explora- 

 tion of the waters off San Diego on March 5-10, to seine for the small 

 ' ' quarter-oil ' ' sizes of sardines in an effort to estimate their abundance 

 as compared with former years. This work, by H. C. Godsil and R. S. 

 Oroker of the laboratory staff, was for the purpose of determining in 

 advance the relative number of the small sardines which would make 

 up the entering size class appearing for the first time in the commercial 

 catch at San Pedro in the fall of 1934. It was found that the "quarter- 

 oil" sizes, resulting from the spring spawning, were scarce and as a 

 result, the San Pedro cannery catch in the autumn would contain few 

 very small fish as compared with the fall of 1933 when the smallest 

 size class was unusually abundant. 



A second trip in March was made by H. C. Godsil (March 12-16) 

 to observe the abundance of large winter sardines farther offshore than 

 the localities visited by the boats fishing for the canneries. During 

 the winter of 1933-34 the fishing had been confined largely to areas 

 close to shore so that we had insufficient knowledge of the presence of 

 large adult fish off shore. Many large schools of "winter fish" were 

 observed by Godsil south of Point Conception in the neighborhood of 

 the channel islands, indicating that fishing had concentrated inshore 

 taking advantage of available fish near by rather than because of a 

 scarcity of sardines elsewhere in the San Pedro area. 



During April two seining trips on the Bluefin were made to fish- 

 ing areas off San Diego. The first trip, on April 1-4, was made by 

 H. C. Godsil and R. S. Croker and the second trip was by R. S. Croker 

 and D. H. Fry, Jr., on April 23-27. These trips confirmed earlier 

 observations as to the scarcity of small sized sardines to be expected in 

 the San Pedro commercial catch of the following autumn. 



On May 14-18, a 600-mile trip on the Bluefin was made by R. S. 

 Croker in southern California waters and on the high seas off Lower 

 California as far south as Cape San Quentin, including Tanner, Cortes 

 and other fishing banks. This trip was to locate albacore, if possible, 

 as well as other tunas and to make observations on the occurrence of 

 sardines in these areas. Albacore were not sighted and sardine schools 

 were not located. The rough seas encountered on this trip might explain 

 the failure to see sardines. Yellowtail and bonito were found in 



