28 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



movements of some of the migratory fishes, but, as will presently be shown by reliable 

 statistics, has been a natural sequence to the unrelenting warfare waged upon them. 



No other industry of the country has evoked a greater amount of unsparing con- 

 demnation. Public indignation has been righteously arrayed against it, though up to 

 this time it has not taken on the concentrated form essential to a proper recognition 

 of the abuse. A convention of representative men from several of the seaboard States 

 has been called by a large number of prominent citizens of New York, for the purpose 

 of considering the cause or causes of edible coast fish scarcity. What will be the 

 outcome of that convention remains to be seen, but the fact is noteworthy that it will 

 be the first regularly combined movement having for its object the correction of an 

 undeniable evil. 



Ordinary familiarity with the subject and a little thoughtful consideration will 

 convince every unprejudiced mind that the time for the correction of this great public 

 wrong has come, and that further delay in regard to the righting of it can hardly be 

 looked upon as less than criminal. 



The great original abundance of the menhaden is one of those wise provisions of 

 the Creator for the maintenance of certain kinds of edible fish life. The shark, the 

 swordfish, bayonet-fish, and other of the larger "corsairs of the sea " indigenous to 

 the Atlantic coast, satisfy their ravenous appetites by indiscriminately slaughtering 

 and devouring menhaden and, when opportunity offers, edible fish also. Why those 

 large carnivone are thus provided for, and what are their special uses, are questions 

 that need not be considered now. It would be ridiculous, nay, almost sacrilegious, to 

 assume that each one has not a mission to perform, whatever that mission may be. 

 Then again, the larger of the carnivorous food-fishes, as the striped bass, squeteague, 

 bluefish, pollock, cod, bonito, and others, are the deadly enemies of the menhaden, 

 feeding mainly upon them, in their season. These menhaden-eaters, finding their 

 natural food supply diminished, prey upon each other, the stronger and more agile 

 overpowering the weaker, and all of them devouring the smaller edible varieties 

 when opportunity offers. 



When the number and voracity of the larger carnivorse of the coast are consid- 

 ered, the amount of food required to support them and the readiness with which they 

 capture it, the number of fish destroyed by them in consequence of the increasing 

 scarcity of menhaden can best be understood by the steadily decreasing edible coast 

 fishes. The opinion of the writer already quoted, that the mission of the menhaden 

 is "unmistakably to be eaten," is undoubtedly correct, just as would be the declara- 

 tion that the mission of the carnivore of the sea are to be the eaters. But for the 

 carnivorse, the sea would have long since been a vast pest-pool, so great is the fecun- 

 dity of the menhaden. They, the carnivore, devour so many of them that such inju- 

 rious multiplication is prevented, and food-fish protected from their deadly assaults. 

 But, when menhaden fishermen interpose with their purse nets, nature's equilibrium 

 is destroyed. If it be asked why the menhaden did not multiply to a hurtful extent 

 prior to the establishment; of the fisheries that have been so rapidly depleting them, 

 the answer is, that nature's laws are in flexible and not always readily explained. 

 She permits no infractions of them without revenging herself, though, as in this case, 

 her penalties are not always imposed on the transgressors, but on innocent parties. 



