REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS OF INLAND FISHERIES. 7 



This increase in the number of fish traps serves perhaps as a fair 

 index of the rapid extension of the commercial fisheries, but tra]) 

 fishing is by no means the sole fishing industry. The alewives, 

 herring, shad, flatfish, menhaden, cod, mackerel, sword-fish, and 

 other fishes caught by means of seines, weirs, beam trawls, harpoons, 

 and by the hook and line, figure conspicuously in the grantl total of 

 commercial fisheries. 



Through enactment bj^ the General Assembly several years ago, 

 the lobster fishery was placed in the hands of this Commission. 



Your Commissioners have faithfully endeavored to enforce the 

 laws for the protection of this valuable but waning industr}', and 

 their endeavors have met with a gratifying degree of success. The 

 majority of the lobstermen and dealers have been from the first in 

 favor of the law and its enforcement, but there are, of course, some 

 who systematically attempt to evade the law and thereby to gain 

 an unfair advantage over their fellow fishermen by taking short or 

 egg lobsters which honest fishermen put back into the water. The 

 first effect of the enforcement of the law was a decrease in the catch, 

 but since that time there has been yearly the steady increase which 

 the advocates of the law expected and desired. 



The present magnitude and the rapid growth of the fishing in- 

 <lustry carried on in the public waters of the state must be of in- 

 terest to your Honorable Body and to every citizen of Rhode Island. 

 Wherever the fishing industry has attained considerable importance, 

 diffievdt questions of legislative regulation have always arisen. The 

 development of the fisheries, and not their restriction, should always 

 be the motive in fisheries legislation. Restrictive measures are 

 naturally the first to come to mind when the danger of exhausting 

 a natural food suppl}^ threatens. While such measures are often 

 warranted, even necessary as more or less temporary expedients, they 

 . should be applied with a reasonable care and not blindly, and they 

 should be supplemented as far as possible with positive constructive 

 measures looking to the actual further development of these resources. 

 The history of oyster culture affords a simple and illuminating ex- 



