REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS OF INLAND FISHERIES. 55 



IX. Experiments in Lobster-Culture. 



The question of the importance of building- up the waning lob- 

 ster industry of Rhode Island needs at the present time no argu- 

 ment. The fact that the lobsters are becoming- scarce, and that 

 the demand is very great, notwithstanding the increase in price, 

 which makes that formerly common food distinctly a luxury, is all 

 too obvious. One Providence dealer alone imports from outside 

 our State more than thirty thousand dollars' worth of lobsters 

 annually, and the Commission of Sea' and Shore Fisheries of 

 Maine estimates the value of the catch of lobsters in Maine for 

 the year 1902 at $1,220,561. How to stop the decline of the indus- 

 try is not a new problem, but is every year becoming a more 

 serious one. Every State which has a lobster fishery has passed 

 laws restricting, in various ways, the catching of lobsters ; and the 

 United States Fish Commission, as well as those of some of the 

 States, has spent large sums of money in attempting to increase 

 the supply by hatching the eggs artificially. 



The new line of attack suggested and strongly urged in 1S98 by 

 Professor H. C. Bumpus, then a member of your commission, and 

 Director of the U. S. F. C. laboratory at Woods Holl, has 

 been developed and carried into effect by your commission during 

 the last three years : namely, the development of a feasible 

 method of protecting the young lobsters through the most perilous 

 stages of growth. Your commission have devised an apparatus 

 entirely unique in principle and application, which has made it for 

 the first time possible to rear lobster fry through these early 

 stages in considerable numbers. 



A second significant step which has been taken toward the solu- 

 tion of the problem of .lobster-culture is the demonstration beyond 

 possibility of doubt that the young lobsters can live through the 

 winter in the shallow estuaries of Narragansett Bay, where they 

 are subjected to the extreme cold of winter and to the increased 



