large fish—some a foot in length—are observed at various places on the coast.
The immature sardines frequent the coast waters throughout the summer and remain in Brittany until late in fall. Some years, if the season is mild, they are caught until the first or second week in December, but a storm coming any time in November is likely to drive them away and terminate fishing for the season. In 1900 sardine fishing at Concarneau was ended November 5—the same date as in 1899—by a southwest storm, which swept away all the sardines in the bay.
The spawning time on the coasts of England and France is from June to October. Spawning takes place at a considerable distance from the land, and ripe or spawning fish are seldom caught, as fishing is done mostly in the inshore waters. The small fish used for canning purposes on the French coast are never found with ripe eggs or milt, and are now known to be immature fish hatched in the summer and fall of the previous year. The eggs are buoyant, and the average number extruded is reported as 60,000. In the Mediterranean the sardine apparently belongs to a different race, which is smaller than the oceanic form and reaches maturity when under 7 inches in length.
When sardines first arrive they are poor and unsuitable for canning; but as the season advances they improve in quality, and are fatter in September than in June and in December than in September. Their food consists mainly of copepods and other small Crustacea. Small fish eggs are also a favorite food. The fondness of the sardine for such eggs plays an important part in the fishery.
The sardines go in schools and swim at or near the surface. As many as 100,000 fish have been taken in one net from one school, but the usual catch is much less. They are preyed upon by cetaceans and by many fish—the mackerel, the haddock and the dolphin being especially destructive on the French coast.
Like other free-swimming oceanic fish, the sardine varies in abundance from year to year; but there is no evidence that the fishing is effecting any permanent reduction of the supply. During the years 1887 to 1890 there was an alarming scarcity of sardines on the French coast, and the outlook for the industry was serious, but after four years the fish returned in their former numbers. The history of the sardine fishery shows what extensive operations may be supported annually when the natural conditions permit the fish to spawn unmolested, the spawning grounds in this case being many miles offshore.
Several American fishes resemble the pilchard, among them the sea herring and the California sardine. The former is extensively canned on the coast of Maine, and often placed on the market as 'genuine French sardines in pure olive oil'; the latter is canned to a limited extent in southern California.
