THE PASSING OF THE STURGEON 371 



fact any important result at all, for the fishery has continued to decline 

 steadily since the laws were enacted. The trouble, however, lies not 

 so much in the provisions of the law itself, as it does in the difficulty 

 of adequate enforcement. The Lake areas are in this respect no differ- 

 ent from other localities, since laws protecting the young sturgeon of 

 the Delaware have been in operation from 1891, yet the fishery in those 

 waters has declined at an extremely rapid rate, and to a greater extent 

 than in almost any other region. 



The other alternative of statutory protection, the close season, has 

 received less common trial because the only time at which a close season 

 has any value is during the spawning period, and at that time the 

 fishery is most profitable. The scarcity of such laws is probably due 

 to the fact that restrictive legislation affecting the fisherman's profits 

 has always been notoriously difficult to pass. Georgia, however, in 

 1901 prohibited catching of sturgeon in all waters of the state for a 

 period of five years. Minnesota in 1905 adopted a close season from 

 March 1 to May 1 of each year, but at the next session of the legislature 

 the Georgia example was followed in the provision for a close season 

 at all times until June 1, 1910. This sort of law seems to afford the 

 only real remedy for existing conditions. Complete prohibition is, of 

 course, much easier to enforce than partial prohibition, because where 

 sturgeon roe can be legally taken at all the carcass can be disposed of 

 readily and it then becomes a difficult matter to prove that the fish 

 from which the roe was taken was undersized or underweight. 



With the difficulties confronting artificial hatching and the ade- 

 quate enforcement of restrictive measures, the future of the sturgeon 

 fishery depends on the absolute cessation of fishing for a period of 

 years during which the supply can be replenished through natural repro- 

 duction. Otherwise the total extinction of the species is as inevitable 

 as was the depletion of the supply. This chain of conditions is not 

 peculiar to the United States, but has prevailed in all the older localities 

 wherever the fishery has been prosecuted. Yet it seems scarcely com- 

 prehensible that a fish so widely distributed through the country, so 

 abundant, and so little used less than three decades ago, has so rapidly 

 disappeared that the end is already in sight. The higher the price 

 of caviar, the more vigorous the pursuit of the sturgeon and the more 

 quickly the end will come. Under the present conditions it is only a 

 question of a few years until the day of the sturgeon fishery will have 

 passed. 



V 



