OCEAN PERCH; (ACADIAN) REDFISH; RED SEA PERCH; RED BREAM; NORWAY HADDOCK
“This is one of the most plentiful of the commercially important fishes in all but the shoalest parts of the Gulf: on the offshore banks, in or over the deep central basin, and along shore.”
From Fishes of the Gulf of Maine by Bigelow and Schroeder (1953) online courtesy of MBL/WHOI http://www.gma.org/fogm/Sebastes_marinus.htm\
The situation cited in the excerpt above, in a couple decades after this 1953 publication, proved no longer to be the case. Subsequent data from NOAA shows 184,370,800 pounds landed in 1951 declining to 290,321 pounds in 2000. This plot is from published NOAA data.
Comments invited. Surely some readers of GMG were involved in this fishery.
Good Morning Gloucester 
The Gulf of Maine population declined by about 99% from 1968 to 1984. (Fishes of the Gulf of Maine by Bigelow and Schoeder 2002 edition)
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In the mid-sixties Gorton’s had a redfish wharf down behind the current location of Rose Marine. I worked there at the time and recall a few things … the German Baader filleting machines that only Gunther could keep running smoothly. A large contingent of people candling, trimming out the “buttons” and packing in one-pounders to be frozen in plate freezers, A platoon of stainless steel cement mixers in which the fillets were bathed in “Fresh-Lock”. The product was labeled “ocean perch” and much of it went to the Chicago market where there was a demand for lake perch. But perch was perch and they did not differentiate. Locally, as I recall, there was little demand for redfish or whatever people chose to call it.
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