FRESH HALIBUT FISHERY. 19 



The George's fishermen 1'requeiitly bleed their halibut by making a cut across the tail. This is 

 aho done to make the fish look white, but we have not known of this method ever having been 

 adopted by the trawlers. The halibut are dressed and iced in the same manner as elsewhere; the 

 separation of the fish caught by each man takes place after the vessel reaches port, those belonging 

 to each "lot" being selected by their respective marks. The above methods of capture by hand- 

 lines, which are common to the George's cod-fishermen, who only catch halibut incidentally, have 

 been adopted by the handliners, which, about 1876-'77, engaged exclusively in the halibut fishery 

 off the eastern slope of George's Bank. 



C. THE MANNER OF DEESSIXG AND ICING THE HALIBUT ON THE VESSEL. 



THE GLOUCESTER METHOD. A crew of men engaged in " dressing down" a deck of halibut are 

 always clothed in "oil-skins" or rubber jacket and trousers. Five of the men the two "cutters," 

 the two "blooders," and the "icer" tie their oil or rubber jacket sleeves tight around their wrists 

 with rope yarns to keep their other clothing free from the gurry and slime. And in rough weather 

 (occasionally at other times) the oil trousers' legs are tied tightly around the boots to prevent the 

 water with which the deck- is often filled from wetting the feet and legs of the fishermen. Two of 

 them, with sharp knives, begin to cut. Grasping the halibut by the gills with the left hand, they 

 haul the fish's head up from the deck; one quick stroke of the knife separates the gills from the 

 head at the throat; another stroke severs the gills from the napes; another rips the fish down the 

 belly, and two more cuts and a quick yank with the left hand take the gills and entrails out. Now 

 the "blooder" grabs the halibut, and, sitting or kneeling on deck, hauls the fish toward him with 

 his left hand, while with his right, which is bare, he pulls the ovaries or spermaries from their 

 cavities and the blood from the back-bone with a quickness that would surprise a novice. Then 

 the "scrub gang" takes the fish in charge. There are two gangs and three men in each. One man 

 armed with two iron gaffs hooks one of these into the head of the fish and the other into its nape, 

 and holds it up and open while the scrubber, with a broom specially prepared for this purpose, 

 scrubs off any loose blood, slime, &c., which may be left on the backbone and in the spawn cavities 

 by the blooder. One man stands by with a draw-bucket full of water, and when the "scrubber" 

 sings out "water" he souses it into the fish and completely rinses him out. Now the halibut is 

 clean and ready to go into the hold, and directly the cry comes up from the ice-house crowd, 

 "Heave down your halibut!" In obedience to this order one of the deck gang, who is generally 

 known as the "idler," takes a gaff, and hooking one fish in the head and another in the tail, as the 

 case may be, hauls them over the hatch, letting them fall down. They strike with a dull thud on 

 the floor of the ice-house, where they are taken in charge by the men below and finally disposed 

 of. In the ice-house there are three men hard at work. One is pounding ice with a wooden beetle 

 or mallet; another, the "icer," is in one of the pens placing the halibut in tiers and filling the 

 cavities, where the entrails, gills, &c., were taken out, with fine ice. When ho gets, a tier prepared 

 in this manner he throws some ice, with a shovel, around their heads and the sides of the pen, but 

 none on top of the fish, and then begins another tier. The third man reaches him the halibut and 

 ice until the pen is full enough, when the fish are covered with from 6 to 12 inches of ice, according 

 to the season. A layer of pounded ice is put under the bottom tier of fish in each pen, the thick- 

 ness of this layer depending somewhat on the season, more ice, of course, being required in summer 

 than when the weather is cold. 



THE NEW LONDON METHOD. The New London halibut catchers have a somewhat different 

 method. "In the first place," said one of them, "we leave one tier of block ice in the bottom 

 of the pen, if the ice does not exceed 8 inches in thickness. The first tier of fish is laid on 



