Fishing Grounds of the Gulf of Maine | Page 5

area of 3,000
square miles; and at the south Cape Cod Bay, whose area, with that of
the waters west of a perpendicular drawn from the western end of the
base line that strikes the land in the vicinity of Portsmouth, N. H.
makes an additional section containing close to 1,500 square miles.
Within the limits thus inclosed there are, roughly, 30,000 square miles
of most productive ground most intensively fished through all the year.
The Bay of Fundy is divided at its head by Cape Chignecto, making
two branches to north and to east--Chignecto Bay and Minas Basin.
With these smaller areas, lying as they do entirely within the territorial
limits of Canada, American fishermen have little to do, although both
are valuable and productive fishing grounds.
[Footnote 6: William Strachey (1609), speaking particularly of Casco
Bay, but the words equally applicable to almost any stretch of the

Maine coast, says "A very great bay in which there lyeth soe many
islands and soe thick and neere together, that can hardly be discerned
the number, yet may any ship pause betwixt, the greatest part of them
having seldom lesse water than eight or ten fathoms about
them"--History of Travalle into Virginia Britannica.]
[Footnote 7: This, the most striking cape of the Atlantic coast line,
made a very prominent landmark for all the early ocean voyagers
approaching it, and all were greatly impressed by it, whether they came
from the south and fought their way through its shoals to eastward, or,
coming from the north, found themselves caught in the deep pocket
which it makes with Cape Cod Bay.
The Spaniard Gomez (1525) gave it the name "Cabo de do Aricifes"
cape of the reefs, referring to the dangerous shoals to the eastward. The
Frenchmen Champlain and Du Monts named it "Cape Blanc", and the
Dutch pilots, also noting its sandy cliffs, called it Witte Hoeck. The
English mariners at first accepted his last name of White Cape, but the
English Captain Anthony Gosnold, the first to make a direct passage to
the waters of the Gulf of Maine from Europe, although at first he called
it "Shoal Hope", soon changed this, because of the success of his
fishing, to "Cape Cod", which title, commonplace though it be, has
been the name to endure despite Prince Charles's attempt to change it to
Cape James in honor of his father.]
[Footnote 8: Cape Sable, at the southern end of Nova Scotia, has held
this title from very old times. It is so indicated on a Portuguese map of
the middle of the sixteenth century.]

BAY OF FUNDY
At the different seasons of the year the entire Bay of Fundy [9] is a
fishing ground for sardines and large herring; and while these are of
somewhat less importance in recent years than formerly, the principal
fisheries of this region still center around the herring industries--the
supplying of the canning factories with the small herring used as
sardines and the taking of large herring for food and bait. The sardine
industry of the State of Maine is largely concentrated in the district
about and including Eastport and Lubec, where about 30 of the 59
factories and 16 of the 43 operating firms are located; so that, while the
herring catches of recent years have fallen much short of their former

proportions, they still show imposing figures.
In the past much of the catch was taken in St. Andrews
(Passamaquoddy) Bay and along the north shore of the Bay of Fundy to
Lepreau Bay and Point. Lepreau. Of late years virtually no herring have
been taken in these waters, in which the herring schools that arrive in
October were accustomed to remain until spring. Of past fishing in this
locality Capt. Sumner Stuart, of Lubec, says:
"The herring left St. Andrews Bay and the North Shore about 1885.
There is no summer netting there now. Those waters and Lepreau Bay
were formerly very productive fishing grounds, it being not unusual to
take 5,000 (count) big herrings (food fish) in a single haul. These were
mainly spring and winter fishing grounds for large herring. The fish
seem to have disappeared from all these grounds at about the same
time.[10]
"In past years (25 to 30 years ago) small herring were driven ashore in
such quantities by their enemies--squid, silver hake and dogfish--that it
sometimes became necessary for the authorities at St. John to use a
snowplow to cover them where they lay decaying on the beach."
From the statistics of the sardine and smoked-herring industry for the
year 1924 (a year, be it noted, in which the sardine industry almost
reached low--level mark for the pack) the waters of the Bay of Fundy
furnished to American purchasers alone a total of herring for smoking
and canning