366 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Middle Atlantic, South Atlantic and Pacific coast states, yielded an 

 aggregate of nearly eight and a half million pounds as compared with 

 less than four and a half million pounds in the earlier year. 24 Every 

 pound of this increased coastal yield in 1888, however, was due to 

 the expansion of the Delaware Eiver and Bay fishery, which in that 

 year produced over 6,400,000 pounds. But even this phenomenal catch 

 is said to have been smaller than it had been a few years before. 25 It 

 seems safe to conclude, therefore, that in 1885 the combined sturgeon 

 catch in the Lakes and in the Delaware region alone was not less than 

 25 per cent, greater than the total product of the whole country in 

 1880. If this be true the total catch in the United States must have 

 ranged at least somewhere above 16,000,000 pounds in 1885. It was 

 the demand for caviar in European markets and especially in Germany 

 which had more than anything else made the fishery profitable and 

 caused it to rise almost in a single decade, 1875-1885, to an industry 

 of important proportions among the valuable fisheries of the country. 



By 1890, almost every district was beginning to show the effects of 

 the vigorous fishing which had swelled the total catch during the early 

 years of the decade. The declining supply was most marked in the 

 lakes, where the catch had fallen off by nearly three million pounds 

 in five years. The Middle Atlantic States then stood first, the quantity 

 taken from the comparatively small expanse of Delaware Bay exceeding 

 the entire lake catch by nearly a million pounds, 26 the total being over 

 three times as great as it had been in 1880, but distinctly less than the 

 amounts reported in the intervening years. In the South Atlantic 

 States also there had been extensive declines in the sturgeon products, 27 

 but since the catch in these areas increased to a marked degree in sub- 

 sequent years it seems necessary to suppose that the low catch of 1890 

 was due in part, at least, to other causes than scarcity of fish. Along 

 the Pacific coast, on the other hand, marked expansion was taking 

 place in the years preceding and subsequent to 1890, as the result of a 

 successful sturgeon industry established on the Columbia Eiver in 1888. 

 Vast quantities of sturgeon had been observed by the fishermen ever 

 since the salmon fishery had begun two decades before, but all that time 

 the sturgeon had been looked on as a nuisance and " in most cases was 

 knocked on the head and set adrift in the river." 28 The abundance of 

 the supply available can be seen from the fact that two years after the 

 business was started the catch rose to nearly 1,700,000 pounds, and to 

 more than 3,000,000 pounds in 1892. This important increase in the 

 Pacific coast district, combined with the greater extent of the Delaware 



24 U. S. Commission Report, 1888, "Statistical Survey of the Coast Fish- 

 eries of the United States." 



25 U. S. Fish Commission Bulletin, 1888, p. 278. 

 28 U. S. Fish Commission Report, 1899, p. 372. 



27 U. S. Fish Commission Bulletin, 1891, p. 281. 



28 U. S. Fish Commission Report, 1893, p. 250. 



