From the Aug. 2, 1890 issue of the Provincetown Beacon, selected and edited by Kaimi Rose Lum
A more discouraging outlook for trap or weir fishing than the present could hardly be conceived. Yet, the old adage, “It’s always darkest just before the dawn,” serves to keep up the spirits of the fishermen. Nothing like such a scarcity of all kinds of edible fish has ever been observed in the waters of the New England coast. The only noticeable increase of the finny tribe in any instance is that of menhaden, but even they have given us the shake lately and have almost totally disappeared.
We have heard of all sorts of famines but we hardly anticipated a fish famine around the shores of Cape Cod. It is frequently said that the unexpected always happens. We had fondly hoped that our state was without the limits of the sportive cyclone, but the king terror of nature’s elements gets in his deadly work right in our midst. There are dull seasons in all kinds of business and we trust the present is only an exceptional case in the matter of our fishing interest. This town has probably $100,000 invested in this enterprise; it has helped to decrease the rate of taxation in former years and given employment to over 130 men and boys. A failure to secure profitable returns for two or three years in succession would entail additional burdens upon the town and cause no little hardship among the older citizens, who have depended upon these weirs for the support of their families. The canning house of the Messrs. Underwood, in the absence of a supply of mackerel, are putting up bluefish at North Truro, where the latter fish can be obtained.
The doubt is often raised as to whether or not the augmented condition of the traps has a tendency to reduce the quantity of fish taken. The remarkable conditions of the present season would seem to dispel the theory of “too many traps.” It is not a lesser number of fish in the immediate vicinity of the weirs, especially, but the same conditions exist along the whole coast and even out on the deep sea. The ways of the denizens of the deep are past finding out. Probably for some good and sufficient reason they have sought, not strictly “new fields and pastures green,” but new waters and a richer supply of food. Like a bad penny they will return, sooner or later, to their former haunts. Hasten the day.
