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Fisheries:
Biology Lesson |
Demersal, Pelagic, and Anadromous Fishes
Cod, haddock, halibut, and flounder are demersal or ground fish—they live on or near the bottom of the ocean. Halibut and flounder are flat fish that look like long pancakes. As they mature, one eye moves from one side of the fish to the other, so that both eyes are on the top side. Flounder weigh only about one pound, but some halibut weigh six hundred pounds or more. Most commercial halibut today range from 5 to 100 pounds. Other demersal fish include pollock, hake, and ocean perch. They are sold as fresh fish and are also used to make frozen fish fillets.
Pelagic fish live in mid-water depths or near the surface. Mackerel and herring are pelagic fish that travel in large schools near the surface. Unlike the white-fleshed fish on the bottom, mackerel and herring are oily fish with darker flesh. Instead of salting and drying, these fish were preserved in salt brine. Mackerel is often canned, and herring may be canned as sardines. Both mackerel and herring are used as bait, because their strong smell attracts other fish and lobsters. In the late nineteenth century, menhaden were also caught on the Maine coast and used for fertilizer and fish oil. Large pelagic fish include tuna, swordfish, and shark.
Anadromous fish spend most of their lives in salt water, but swim up rivers to spawn in fresh water. Maine anadromous fish are salmon, shad, alewives, and trout. These are preserved best smoked, but historically were not preserved for long periods like cod and mackerel. Alewives are a popular bait fish for lobstering.
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Salmon were extremely abundant in colonial times and were a popular fresh fish, in addition to being salted or canned. Fresh salmon is popular today as a result of the availability of fast, refrigerated transport. Eastern Maine and New Brunswick have many salmon aquaculture pens.
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Shellfish
Shellfish is a general term including mollusks and crustaceans. Mollusks are clams, mussels, scallops, and oysters. Crustaceans include crabs, shrimp, and lobsters.
Clams are dug from Maine’s beaches, and were once used as bait for cod. Like clams, mussels have been used for both food and bait. They inhabit intertidal zones in rocky areas. Mussels have grown in popularity since the advent of mussel aquaculture. Oysters also are mostly farm-raised on the Maine coast. Sea scallops have large delicious meats that bring high prices. They are caught with a special metal-ringed net dragged along the bottom behind a fishing boat, or else by scuba divers. These shellfish feed by filtering water; poisonous plankton blooms called red tides and poor water quality can close the fishery.
Shrimp are most plentiful during the winter when they carry their eggs. Maine shrimp, or northern shrimp, are smaller than southern shrimp, growing only to about 4-5 inches in 5 years. Crabs caught in Maine are rock crabs. Picking crabmeat is time-consuming, making them less popular than lobsters. Crabs are usually caught in lobster traps as bycatch.
Today, lobsters are the most valuable fishery in Maine, second only to herring in tons of fish landed.
Marine Mammals
Harbor porpoises, harbor seals, fin whales, minke whales, humpback whales and, rarely, right whales live along the Maine coast. Right whales historically provided blubber for oil, and harbor seals were sometimes hunted for their furs. Today all marine mammals are protected by the Federal Government and may not be hunted or disturbed.
Other Marine Creatures
Two echinoderms, sea urchins and sea cucumbers, are now fished in Maine. Sea cucumbers, also known as beche-de-mer, were a delicacy in nineteenth-century China and were harvested from Pacific islands. Today, they are processed in Stonington, Maine, for the pharmaceutical chondroitin as well as for export as food. Sea urchin roe is popular in Japan. Elvers, or baby eels, are also considered a delicacy in the Far East, and eels are fished for use as bait.
For more information on Maine and Northeast Atlantic fish, see the Maine Department of Marine Resources web page on species Information.
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