UC San Diego Library – Scripps Digital Collection

Landing bulletins provide basic catch records of amounts and values of marine resources taken by California's commercial fisheries plus summarizations of catches by the passenger-carrying fishing industry. These figures are of local, national, and international significance to those interested in the wise utilization and management of California's living marine resources.

This report for 1977 through 1986 is the 37th in a series stemming from the first gathering of commercial fisheries landing data by the California Department of Fish and Game in 1916 and the subsequent first publication of these catch data in 1929 for the years 1926 and 1927.

California's fishery statistics are based on a system where fish dealers, processors, and operators of passenger-carrying fishing vessels send duplicate copies of their landing records to the department. Fish Bulletin 86 (Bureau of Marine Fisheries 1952), which reported the catch for 1950, describes fully the system and methods used in collecting commercial fish records. Basic principles remain the same today as then, although some methods and equipment have changed. Young (1969) described the passenger-carrying vessel industry in Fish Bulletin 145.