NATIONAL FISHERY CONGRESS. 
357 
times the best fishing may be inshore, and the trap-owners will reap a harvest; 
sometimes it will be farther off the coast, and the seiners will enjoy a monopoly. It 
has frequently happened that for a period of years one part of the coast has been 
affected very differently from others. For many years the Gulf of St. Lawrence was 
a favorite resort of American mackerel men, but it now seldom repays the trouble of a 
visit. The Bay of Fundy, though formerly productive, has not supported a mackerel 
fishery for twenty years. 
All of these facts and many others show that the movements of the mackerel are 
as changeable as the weather and in the present state of our knowledge just as 
uncertain. The success of the fleet in any given year is no certain criterion of the 
abundance of mackerel during that year, and it is only by taking the averages for a 
number of successive years that the real state of the fishery can be apprehended. 
There is also some direct evidence of the existence of large numbers of mackerel even 
in seasons which have been failures. The summer of 1877 will be remembered as one 
of the most disastrous that the mackerel men have known since the beginning of 
the century; yet in that year was seen what was probably the greatest single body 
of mackerel ever recorded, estimated by an experienced captain to contain 1,000,000 
barrels, a number about twice as large as the entire fleet has ever taken in one year. 
This would seem to indicate that instead of the schools being scattered so as to come 
under the observation of fishermen, many of them were congregated into this vast, 
roving body. A few similar bodies, which might easily escape observation, would 
explain the apparent scarcity that year, and the successful spawning of these would 
account for the great host which visited Massachusetts Bay in 1880 and spread along 
the New England coast in the following year, when the catch was unprecedented. 
Now, it has very justly been pointed out that these known facts respecting the 
more local movements of the mackerel, which are the cause of many of the minor 
variations in the catch, argue forcibly that similar fluctuations of larger degree are 
explained by migrations of greater scope. When the center of distribution of the 
mackerel hosts falls within our waters, there is a plenty ; when it falls elsewhere, the 
degree of scarcity corresponds with its remoteness. In this connection it remains to 
point out that the mackerel, unlike anadromous species, is not constrained to visit the 
coasts by the impulse to spawn, but that this process may and frequently # does take 
place in the open ocean, far from land. 
Some of the factors which determine the movements of the great body of mackerel 
are known, some are unknown. Of the known factors the most important is the 
distribution of the pelagic organisms which serve as food for the species. But this 
again is determined by temperature, winds, currents, precipitation, and many other 
factors. Though the incompleteness of our knowledge leaves the question of variable 
numbers still open, we are probably safe in the tentative conclusion that migrations 
and variable fertility are two of the more important factors which enter into the 
solution of the problem. If these are among the causes, have we the remedy? We 
can not hope to control the migrations, though we may learn how to follow the mackerel 
in its wanderings or to take it from the depths. The possibility of developing new 
local schools by artificial means may be suggested, but this would be a weighty task, 
and, moreover, the same influences which led the old schools to migrate would probably 
affect the new. But if we set this supposition aside it remains for us to inquire if 
there is any probability that the desired result of uniformity in the supply can be 
effected by artificial propagation. 
