368 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



annals of commercial fisheries is there a parallel to this case of the 

 sturgeon, rising as it did in less than a quarter of a century from a 

 fish despised and ruthlessly destroyed on all sides to the highest rank of 

 commercial value. 



The high prices for caviar resulted in continued operations in the 

 old localities even in the face of greatly reduced hauls. This condition 

 is nowhere better illustrated than in the Delaware district, where the 

 average catch per net dropped from 60 fish in 1890 to less than half that 

 number six years later. 34 Yet in 1897 nearly 1,000 fishermen were 

 operating over 150 miles of gill nets in the sturgeon fishery of Dela- 

 ware Bay and the number of boats employed had actually increased. 35 

 At the same time operations were extended and expanded in every 

 available new area to supply the growing demand and to profit from 

 the rapidly rising prices. The sturgeon fishery in the Gulf States was 

 begun at this time because of the increasing scarcity of the species in 

 northern waters. 36 The south side of Long Island was the scene of an 

 important fishery begun in 1892, producing more than half a million 

 pounds of products five years later, 37 while the yield from interior 

 waters, though steadily decreasing, was annually forming a larger 

 proportion of the total output of the country. Only by most vigorous 

 means was the total extent of the industry maintained anywhere near 

 its former level, while the fishermen to eke out profits were endeavor- 

 ing to utilize more of the sturgeon by the manufacture of oil and 

 fertilizer from the carcass. 



By 1897 the sturgeon fishery attained the highest point of its com- 

 mercial value, over half a million dollars, while at the same time it 

 appears to have reached its limit of endurance under the strain of in- 

 cessant demand placed upon it. In the decade elapsed since then there 

 has been only decline — decline almost universal and astounding in its 

 extent. In many places, the sturgeon is practically extinct and in 

 others, where once important fisheries were prosecuted, the industry is 

 nearly abandoned. New York and Pennsylvania waters have almost 

 ceased to yield sturgeon products despite the half million pounds from 

 Long Island in 1897. The same condition appears in the Carolinas, 

 while the species has entirely disappeared from the waters of Eastern 

 Florida and Oregon. On the Pacific coast, as a whole, where more 

 than 3,000,000 pounds were taken in 1895, less than four per cent, of 

 that quantity was obtained in 1904. The Middle Atlantic area as a 

 whole and the Great Lakes are now yielding less than one tenth the 

 amount caught two decades ago. Lake St. Clair, which alone gave 

 nearly a million pounds in 1880 has not produced more than 10,000 



84 U. S. Fish Commission Report, 1899, p. 371. 



86 Ibid., pp. 379-80. 



88 Bureau of Fisheries Report, 1903, pp. 443, 445. 



87 Bureau of Fisheries Document 609, p. 29. 



