trawl in an effort to protect the area as a nursery for commercial 

 fish species (Moss, 1986, personal communication) . This ban is 

 still in effect and only hook and line fishing is allowed in 

 Buzzards Bay. 



Published literature on fish stocks in Buzzards Bay is 

 rather scarce; a Buzzards Bay finfish database is being compiled 

 by Dr. S.A. Moss at Southeastern Massachusetts University with 

 funding from the EPA. At present, this unfinished database 

 contains approximately 90% of the existing collection of scientific 

 data gathered in the Bay for the last 25 years. 



The other known source of unpublished fisheries data is 

 the results of the stock assessment survey carried out by the 

 Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. This is a semi-annual 

 standardized bottom trawl survey program to monitor relative 

 abundance of fish stocks in state territorial waters (a 3 nautical 

 mile wide border extending from the Rhode Island to the New 

 Hampshire boundaries, including Cape Cod Bay and Nantucket Sound) . 

 The entire Massachusetts territorial water is divided into 5 

 regions. These 5 regions are then subdivided into stations that 

 are defined by depth (Figure 12) . The data are summarized for the 

 entire 5 region area so that bay-specific information could not be 

 obtained. 



As part of the standardized trawling program, 2 0-minute 

 daytime tows were made along depth contours. General station 

 locations were predetermined by random selections. If a 

 pre-determined site could not be sampled, an alternative site 

 within that depth interval was selected. 



In the spring of 1983, some commercially important 

 species (Table 8) were recorded at a higher level of biomass than 

 in 1982; however, the total number of species showed a 9% decrease. 

 In spring of 1984, the biomass of the commercially important 

 species was at a lower level than in 1983, and the biomass for all 

 species decreased 29% from 1981. This represented a decline in 

 coastal fishery resources for the third consecutive year (Howe et 

 al. , 1985) . 



In autumn, surveys are typically characterized by low 

 groundfish abundance (due to maximum water temperature) and to 

 large populations of commercially pre-exploitable sized fish 

 (Tables 8 and 9) . The autumn surveys of 1983 and 1984 showed 

 sequential decreases in abundance for adults and juveniles for both 

 finfish and groundfish. The 1984 groundfish levels were 

 dramatically lower than those normally encountered. The only 

 species that demonstrated an increase was the black sea bass, with 

 numbers more than 10 times greater the time series average (Howe 

 et al. , 1985) . 



The seasonal changes reflected by these data may just 



9 



