288 BULLKTIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



The entire aspect of our fishing industry to-day, in its protean manifestations and 

 multitudinous relations, warrants the earnest consideration of all those engaged in its 

 prosecution, intrusted with its regulation, or concerned in its welfare, in order that 

 such action may be taken as will preserve this great source of wealth for the present 

 generation and transmit it unimpaired to posterity. This idea has been well brought 

 out in the interesting paper presented by Dr. MacCallum at the opening of this 

 congress. 



As to the ultimate success of the measures for the restoration and preservation of 

 our lake, river, and shore fisheries, I entertain no doubt. The history of our black 

 bass, shad, and oyster fisheries, for example, shows the possible influence that man 

 may exert on the abundance of our economic water animals by adopting positive or 

 direct methods, for the increase of the supply, rather than by placing sole reliance on 

 legal restraints on the capture of the products. 



As an offset to the degeneration of some of our prominent fisheries through the 

 influence of man, stands the unquestioned improvement that has been effected in 

 other fisheries through the same instrumentality. I think the facts bear out the asser- 

 tion that the decrease in the value of those fisheries which to-day present a decline as 

 compared with the most prosperous period of their existence is less than the increased 

 production of other fisheries as the direct result of artificial methods employed for 

 their maintenance or improvement. The oyster alone, owing to the adoption of plans 

 for its active cultivation and preservation in nearly every oyster-producing State, in 

 contradistinction with the do-nothing policy that formerly and so long prevailed, has 

 increased in value as an economic commodity to an extent that almost overbalances 

 the combined decrease of all other fishery products. 



There is reason for great satisfaction with the results achieved in behalf of the 

 commercial fisheries by artificial propagation. There seems little doubt that the 

 most important river fishery of the Atlantic coast, that for shad, is almost wholly 

 dependent for its present existence and future prosperity on the means taken by fish- 

 culturists to aid nature in securing the fertilization and hatching of the largest possi- 

 ble percentage of ova. The noteworthy results accomplished on the Pacific coast by 

 the experimental introduction of relatively small numbers of shad fry into a few of the 

 rivers afford an invaluable basis for determining the influence on the abundance 

 of shad in native waters of enormous annual plants of fry and yearlings. The recent 

 inauguration of a shore cod fishery on parts of the New England coast where cod were 

 previously scarce or almost unknown is unquestionably attributable to the hatching 

 operations of the U. S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries, and has proved conclusively- 

 that, even in the case of such an eminently pelagic species as the cod, man may be 

 potent in influencing its abundance. 



Few subjects connected with the commercial fisheries are more important than the 

 relations which exist between the kind and quantity of apparatus used in a given 

 region, on the one hand, and the supply of fish, on the other. Unquestionably, certain 

 modes of fishing are more destructive than other modes, and some forms of appa- 

 ratus are more harmful than other forms, independently of the quantities of fish that 

 may be taken. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is nevertheless true that two different 

 kinds of apparatus, taking exactly the same quantities of fish at the same time, may 

 be very different in their effects on the maintenance of the supply; and, again, two 





