PKEFACE. XIX 



to itself. Among the most important of these are the oyster fishery, 

 the off-shore cod fishery, the whale fishery, the fur-seal fishery, the 

 mackerel fishery, the menhaden fishery, the halibut fishery, the ant- 

 arctic seal and sea-elephant fishery, the west-coast salmon fishery, the 

 lobster, the shad and alewife fishery, the swordfish fishery, and the clam 

 fisheries. 



The off-shore fisheries are carried on chiefly by citizens of the New 

 England and Middle States, and are prosecuted on the great oceanic 

 banks extending from Nantucket to Labrador, and upon the ledges and 

 shoals between these and the coast. 



The great purse-seine fisheries for mackerel and menhaden are carried 

 on north of Cape Hatteras at distances from the shore varying from 1 

 mile to 150 miles. The fishing grounds in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, 

 formerly frequented by many hundreds of American vessels, have been 

 entirely abandoned since the introduction of the purse-seine, and in 

 1882 only one vessel visited those waters, returning with about 200 

 barrels of mackerel. The oyster fishery is located for the most part 

 between Cape Hatteras and Cape Cod, chiefly in the great inland bays. 

 In all the great rivers of the Atlantic coast are fisheries for the anad- 

 romous shad and the two species of alewife. About the keys of South- 

 ern Florida is an extensive sponge fishery, and on the shoals of the 

 Gulf of Mexico the red snapper and grouper fisheries are yearly increas- 

 ing in value. The fur-seal fishery is chiefly located upon the Pribylov 

 Islands of Alaska. A small fleet of vessels yearly penetrates to the 

 ice-bound islands of the antarctic for seal-skins and sea-elephant oil. 

 The whaling fleet, with headquarters at New Bedford and San Fran- 

 cisco, in the main frequent the North Pacific, though a number of 

 smaller vessels, many of them from Provincetown, pursue the sperm 

 whale in tropical waters. The salmon fishery is seated chiefly upon the 

 Columbia River and its tributaries, though other rivers in Oregon and 

 California produce large quantities of salmon, which is extensively 

 " canned" and exported. The most valuable product of the Great Lake 

 fisheries is the whitefish. The swordfish fishery of southern New Eng- 

 land, though employing but 40 vessels, and perhaps 160 men, produces 

 1,500,000 pounds' weight annually. 



The export of American fishery products is comparatively small, 

 owing to the fact that the demand for such products for home consump- 

 tion is really greater than the supply, and is constantly on the increase. 

 In 1880 the total value of exported fish products amounted to $5,744,580, 



