. Commercial fisheries review. Fisheries; Fish trade. ARTICLES THE NEW THREAD HERRING FISHERY IN EASTERN GULF OF MEXICO By Charles M. Fuss, Jr.* The Atlantic thread herring, Opisthonema oglinum (Le Sueur), is a marine fish of the family Clupeidae that ranges from the Gulf of Maine to Brazil and throughout the Gulf of Mexico (Butler, 1961; Berry and Barrett, 1963). Thread he r ring seldom exceed 10 inches and are characterized by a thread- like elongation of the last ray of the dorsal fin (fig. 1). This characteristic led to the name hairy back" frequently used by com- mercial
. Commercial fisheries review. Fisheries; Fish trade. ARTICLES THE NEW THREAD HERRING FISHERY IN EASTERN GULF OF MEXICO By Charles M. Fuss, Jr.* The Atlantic thread herring, Opisthonema oglinum (Le Sueur), is a marine fish of the family Clupeidae that ranges from the Gulf of Maine to Brazil and throughout the Gulf of Mexico (Butler, 1961; Berry and Barrett, 1963). Thread he r ring seldom exceed 10 inches and are characterized by a thread- like elongation of the last ray of the dorsal fin (fig. 1). This characteristic led to the name hairy back" frequently used by com- mercial Fig. 1 - The Atlantic thread herring, Opisthonema oglinum (Le Sueur). Thread herring occur in great numbers on the west coast of Florida, particularly be- tween Tampa Bay and the Florida Keys. They are frequently concentrated in nearshore wa- ters, generally inside the 10-fathom contour. The earliest report on the extent of thread herring schools in the eastern Gulf resulted from tuna bait explorations by the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries' "Oregon" in 1953 (Butler, 1961). In 1967, Bullis and Thomp- son--on the basis of aerial and surface sur- veys by BCF's Exploratory Fishing and Gear R e s ear ch Base, Pascagoula, mated that the Gulf stock is about 1 million tons. The size and significance of the re- source have been further confirmed by aerial surveys of the St. Petersburg Beach Labora- tory and by commercial exploratory fishing (Sykes, 1967). THE DEVELOPING FISHERY In 1961, Butler described the early (1953-60) developments of the fishery on the Florida Gulf coast. The industrial fishery began in the St. Petersburg area during winter 1958-59, when catches up to 27 tons per set were made withlampara seines. Single-boat purse seining, introduced in winter 1959-60, produced catches of 5 to 40 tons per set. The fish were transported to pet food and reduc- tion plants in the northern Gulf of Mexico be- cause landing facilities were not available on the lowe
Size: 1983px × 1260px
Photo credit: © The Book Worm / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., book, bookcentury1900, booksubjectfisheries, booksubjectfishtrade
