19th & Early 20th Century Marine Ecology & Fisheries Research Reports.
In 1871, Congress empaneled and funded a federal Commission of Fish and Fisheries, (commonly known as the U.S. Fish Commission ) directing it to investigate: " the causes of decrease in the supply of useful food-fishes of the United States, and of the various factors entering into the problem; and (2) " the determination and employment of such active measures as may seem best calculated to stock or restock the waters of the rivers, lakes and the sea."

For the next three decades, the Commission deployed its research vessels on the nation's rivers, lakes and oceans, trained fishery agents to document in detail the catches landed in American and Canadian fishing ports, actively corresponded with scientists, fisherman and fishery related naturalists of the United States and other nations, documented the ecology and fisheries of the rivers, bays and coastal waters of the United States and Canada, set up large scale salmon hatcheries in New England and the Pacific Northwest, and used a floating fish hatchery to replenish atlantic shad in east coast rivers.

The independent Commission was renamed Bureau of Fisheries in 1903 and incorporated into the new US Department of Commerce, eventually becoming the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Penobscot Bay Prehistory -The Lost Red Paint People of Maine___ Additional info

New England's late 19th /early 20th century fishing schooner fleet

* About these digitized reports

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This reports are copied from (1) original paper editions and (2) NOAA online archive pdf files of: the Annual Reports of the United States Fish Commission, 1871-1903, the Bulletin of the US Fish Commission 1881 to 1903 ; Fishing Grounds of the Gulf of Maine, U. S. Bureau of Fisheries 1929; and the Report of the Commissioner of Sea and Shore Fisheries of the State of Maine for 1897-1898.

Original paper editions are in collections at the Bangor Public Library, the Library of Congress, and the libraries of the University of Maine Darling Marine Center and the Maine Department of Marine Resources Laboratory. A sincere thank you! to the patient assistance of the librarians stewarding these invaluable information resources.

Digitized and uploaded to the internet by Ron Huber, Penobscot Bay Watch, Rockland, Maine, 2005-2008. Please contact him to point out errata, or for more information.

Special thanks to Don Dunbar for locating and supplying two important missing pages of the 1898 report!

Bulletins of the U. S. Fish Commission 1881-1901
Selected reports published by the U.S. Fish Commission describing the fish and fisheries of the rivers and lakes of New England and Eastern Canada, the Gulf of Maine and the greater Northwest Atlantic.

US Fish Commission: Annual Reports 1871-1903
The complete Annual Reports of the U.S. Fish Commission. More than 10,000 pages of reports and illustrations of the fish and fisheries of 19th Century America and Canada.

Fishing Grounds of the Gulf of Maine, 1929
A description of the ecology and environments of 300 important fishing grounds located in the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank and the offshore Canadian grounds. A clickable map of 80 of those grounds, off Midcoast Maine. From reports by scientists, regulators and fishermen of the late 19th and early 20th century.

Maine Sea & Shore Fisheries 1897-1912
Maine's Commissioners of Sea & Shore Fisheries, Annual Reportsto the Maine Governor and Legislature.

Maine Inland Fisheries & Game, 1895-1902. Annual Reports.

Thomas Jefferson on Whaling & Cod Fisheries, 1791