92 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Fisheries, a Matter of Concern 



It is not very difficult to understand why the fisheries so rarely 

 receive mention in discussions of water conservation. In the general 

 mind, fresh-water fisheries do not rank with the bases of industry so 

 much as with the means of recreation. Some industries assert them- 

 selves by figures, but, in the way of statistics, the fresh-water fisheries 

 have not the striking appeal of established agricultural industries: 

 statistically speaking, we can not now compare fish with potatoes. 

 Primarily, however, people do not think of fisheries in connection with 

 water conservation, because it is not generally understood that the two 

 have a connection worthy of consideration. It is worth while to inquire 

 if there is a relation of real significance. 



The value and the meaning of the fish resources to the people of 

 the United States depends upon the contribution of an important ele- 

 ment of food supply and the offering of a peculiar field of recreation. 

 Perhaps, in the mind of the average man of this country, the one bene- 

 fit would be regarded in equal measure with the other. This is not an 

 inevitable or universal condition; it is an incident of the present state 

 of the fishery. There are countries where the taking of fish for sport is 

 almost unknown, but where the fish resources are regarded as of vital 

 moment to the welfare of the people, and where the capture and the 

 preservation and the distribution of fish are industries that are recog- 

 nized to be of elemental importance, in similar fashion to agriculture. 

 In many other counties fish forms much more of a staple food than 

 with us, and a far larger proportion of the people find a livelihood in 

 the fishery industries. Our people are not essentially different from 

 others in their appetites and bodily needs. 



The basic claim of fisheries to public recognition rests upon the part 

 that fish must play in the future food supply of the country ; but how 

 is it to be said what this future part will be? Certainly the future 

 is not to be measured by the present. We know that the fisheries of our 

 principal streams are in a state of depletion except in rare localities, and 

 we know, though we are much less conscious of this fact, that the 

 compensatory development of commercial fishery resources in the rivers, 

 by artificial propagation or by other well-directed means, is relatively 

 slight. Nearly all of our thought, all of our energies, all of our ex- 

 penditures, have been directed to promote the abundance of game fishes, 

 and perhaps we might have to confess that we were thinking not so 

 much of providing something to eat as of supplying something to catch. 



A little reflection, a little common sense, will suggest to us that 

 neither the present nor the past condition of the interior fisheries fore- 

 shadows the future. As our country becomes more thickly populated, 

 as the capacities of the lands become more and more severely taxed, 

 as the prices of meats mount higher, it is inevitable that we shall look 



