The history of total fish and shellfish landings in the two states (New York and New Jersey) that form the landward boundaries of New York Bight is a history of change. Resource after resource has produced maximum landings, then declined. Total landings dropped from about 315,000 metric tons in 1956 to about 23,000 in 1967 and have risen only moderately since that lime. The rise and fall of the industrial fisheries , mostly menhaden, was responsible for most of this decline, and this has masked trends in the food fisheries.Altogether about 132 species or groups of species of fishes and invertebrates have been reported as landed in New Jersey or New York since 1880. Fifty of these are discussed and illustrated with figures and tables of landings. Edible finfish species as a group reached peak landings in 1939 and declined fairly steadily to about one-third that level in the 1970s. Molluscan and crustacean shellfish production reached two peaks in 1950 and 1966, the second considerably higher than the first. This recovery of shellfish landings in 1966 would not have occurred were it not for the rapid development of the surf clam fishery in the 1950s.The timing of the declines makes it clear that foreign fishing was not the cause, for foreign fishing probably could not have affected the fisheries of New York Bight before the mid-1960s. Actually, total catches of resources taken only by domestic fishermen hove declined more sharply than total domestic catches of species shared with foreign fleets. Foreign fishing is but a symptom of the troubles of the domestic fisheries, some of which are imagined. The ills of the domestic fisheries ore economic and sociopolitical, and they will not yield easily to scientific solutions.