The Leaping Tuna 55 



Rev. Ambrose informs me that it regularly visits 

 St. Margaret's Bay every summer, several speci- 

 mens being taken and rendered down for oil. 

 They were particularly abundant in 1876. They 

 are never seen in the Basin of Minas.'" 



That the Atlantic species, so far as seen, are 

 mainly giants is shown by the condition of nets 

 after their visits, Captain Atwood describing an 

 eighty-yard net which had forty-seven round holes 

 after a raid of these fishes; the tunas had gone 

 through it as through paper. In the Canadian 

 Fishing Report of 1863 Dr. Fortin states that 

 the fish is " quite abundant in the Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence, especially the Bay of Chaleur and off 

 Gaspe, and also in the straits of Belle Isle and 

 Blanco Sablon Bay. It is also taken at Cara- 

 quette." Dr. Fortin adds, "The fishing is quite 

 exciting, although tiresome and requiring a good 

 deal of skill (steel hooks are used, tied to solid 

 lines), as in the efforts to escape they pull with 

 such violence as to endanger the lives of the 

 fishermen by dragging them overboard." In the 

 Mediterranean, the catch is entirely by a vast 

 net, known as a madrague, which is very suc- 

 cessful at Favignana, where as much as seventy 

 tons of the fish, here known as the tunny, is taken 



