CHAPTER XIV

THE MACKEREL FISHERY IN RECENT YEARS

For the last forty years no branch of our fisheries has occupied so public a position as that held by the mackerel fishery. This prominence is due largely to legislation, both domestic and foreign, that has been enacted in reference to the fishery. The industry does not possess one tenth the value that it had twenty-five years ago. Yet it holds the attention still, not only for what it has been but also for the possibilities that it possesses. The mackerel is the mysterious fish of the sea. Its habits have been closely and scientifically studied; its yearly haunts have been noted and visited by fishermen for generations; experts have been detailed by the National Government to examine into its methods of propagation with the hope of increasing artificially the number of the fish in the sea; many devices for its capture have been invented, from the fish-pole, the gaff and the jig of earlier times to the wholesale methods of nets and seines; improvement in craft structure and motive power have gone along with improved methods of capture; ice-houses now take the place of the well-boats of ante-bellum days, while the speed of schooners has been increased by sharpening and deepening the hull, by spreading more sail, and by employing auxiliary motor power.

Because the mackerel is the mysterious fish of the sea is the reason for many of the changes in the methods employed in taking the fish. Fishermen must be prepared for any emergency. With them, the race is in most cases with the swift. The uncertainty of appearance of the schools of

mackerel increases this need of extreme care in preparation for catching them. Mackerel have certain well-defined habits of appearance. For example, they first make their appearance off the coast of the Hatteras region the last of March or the first of April. The body of fish advances northward as far as Block Island, reaching that place about the first week in June. At about the same time another body of fish appears on the coast of Nova Scotia, advances along shore, follows up the Cape Breton shore to disappear finally in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence before the first of July.

In the meantime, the Block Island body of mackerel may have moved eastward to George's Bank, or turned north to appear along the New England coast; or they may disappear without leave or notice for the remainder of the summer. Similar conditions may exist with the body of fish that entered the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. With the coming of the fall months the mackerel feels the instinct of migration as does the summer song bird. Immense schools of the fish may appear in almost any part of the Gulf of Maine or of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, preparatory to their annual fall migration. When the one school leaves Nantucket behind and the other disappears south of Scatari and Cape Sable the mackerel vanish for the winter, for their haunts during the colder months of the year are still unknown to the fishermen.

With the opening of another spring they will return to the surface of the ocean near their usual haunts to repeat the great movement that their ancestors have followed for ages. This much the fisherman can depend upon, generally. But there are a thousand and one other tricks of the fish that are beyond knowing. They may appear in small, detached schools which, if caught, will repay the fisherman with a few barrels only. Or they may be in an immense school too large for a twelve-hundred-foot seine to encom

pass. Many instances are on record of the schooling of the mackerel in so great a body that it extended for miles in length and breadth over the surface of the ocean. Under such conditions, it may be a difficult task to catch them. Usually mackerel are sensitive to maneuvers to catch them; when they are wild it is almost impossible for the fisherman to take them, and a dozen "water-hauls" may be made during the day without any success on the part of the fisherman. On the other hand, a fortunate streak of good fishing may continue for several days and a cargo of fish be secured in the time; such conditions are unusual and are attended by great physical exertions on the part of the vessel's crew.

The annual catch of fish is a very unsafe guide by which to compute the quantity of mackerel in the sea. The quantity of mackerel that exist in the sea probably does not vary greatly from one year to another. During periods covering ten or twenty years there may be a difference. The fisherman realizes, as the landsman cannot, that the amount of mackerel in the ocean to be caught is immense -a quantity beyond all possibility of computing; the season's catch may be only ten thousand barrels, yet his knowledge of conditions causes the fisherman to believe that there are millions upon millions of them left untouched, the possibilities of several seasons' work in the future.

Thus it is that the mackerel fishery offers great hope of reward to the skillful seiner. In a successful year his vessel may stock from $15,000 to $40,000. It is with the hope. of making a good season's catch that he continues in the business from year to year. It is with the same hope that the mackerel fleet continues to exist. If an equal division were made each year of the proceeds of the total catch it is likely that the individual share would fall below the amount required to support a fisherman and his family for

the year. But any year it may happen that conditions are just right for the fishermen-plenty of mackerel to be found, favorable weather, good markets, and ease in taking the fish. When such a season exists the captain and crew make good wages and the vessel owners may have a share large enough to pay for the first cost of the vessel. Although the state of the mackerel fishery is now in a depressed condition it does not signify that the fishery will cease; it may be only the ebb-tide of a prosperity that has had periodical fluctuations since the beginning of the fishery ninety years ago.

When considered from its economic point of view the mackerel fishery since the Civil War may be separated easily into two periods. The first twenty years were years of continued prosperity. The prosperous state of the mackerel fishery had its beginning in 1845, after a decade of depression. There was a short period of depression from 1855 to 1860, but not serious. The prosperity of the fishery culminated during the Civil War when the country's catch of mackerel exceeded $6,000,000 in value in a single year. Between 1845 and 1885 the number of barrels of salt mackerel annually marketed never fell below 100,000 barrels. During twelve of these years, at least, the number was in excess of 300,000 barrels. The lowest catch of the New England fleet from 1867 to 1885 was 117,096 barrels, in the year 1877. The greatest catch of salt mackerel was in 1884, there being 478,076 barrels, the largest quantity ever caught in a year in the history of the fishery. During the first twenty years after the war, the quantity of the catch varied from year to year, as is usual with this industry. But the average held up well, it being about 215,000 barrels yearly. The total catch from 1867 to 1885 inclusive was 4,071,705 barrels of salt mackerel.1

Beginning with the year 1886 and continuing to the present day the mackerel fishery shows a remarkable and in1 Compiled from the Boston Fish Bureau Reports.

explicable decadence. This change did not come gradually through a number of years, but, instead, the fishery dropped in a year to only one-fourth its former volume and never has risen since to any respectable semblance of its former prosperous condition. The years since 1886 have found the annual catch only 43,000 barrels, an amount in striking contrast with the average of 215,000 barrels of the nineteen years that preceded the present period, or the 225,000 barrels of the forty-eight years ending with 1866. The total catch of the mackerel fleet from 1886 to 1908 was 978,357 barrels. The catch of salt mackerel for the three years, 1883-1885, exceeded by 20,000 barrels the total catch of salt mackerel for the last twentythree years. During this period of decadence the industry has fallen off to about twenty per cent of the volume maintained from the active inception of the industry to the end of the period of prosperity in 1885. Not since the year 1814 has there been so few salt mackerel taken as in the year 1906, when the catch was only 10,136 barrels.

What reason can be offered in explanation of this remarkable decline of the mackerel industry during the last twenty-three years? No certain cause, no satisfactory reason, has yet been found. Allowance should be made for the increase of the fresh mackerel trade during the past few years when considering the falling off in the salt mackerel output; also, the decrease in the amount of tonnage employed in the fishery means a decrease in the average annual catch. Other reasons have been advanced, but not any one of them, nor all of them taken together, can offer a satisfactory solution to the puzzle.

Viewed historically, the story of the mackerel fishery for the last forty years centers about three events, the development of the southern spring fishery by the introduction of purse-seines for catching the fish, and the use of ice for preserving them; the extension of the privilege of inshore