following organizations contributed facilities, funds, and personnel: 

 Uo So Fish and Wildlife Service 5 Uo S. Coast and Geodetic Survey; 

 Ohio Division of Conser\"ation; New York Conservation Department; 

 Ontario Game and Fisheries Department; Health Department, City of 

 Buffalo; Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences. Through the colla- 

 boration of these several agencies a concerted attack was possible 

 on such problems as factors of abundance and distribution of fish, 

 regulation and management of fisheries, and pollution in relation 

 to fisheries and municipal water supplies. 



Although the Service made a limnological survey of eastern Lake 

 Erie oossible by supplying the services of the research vessel 

 Shearwater , staff members of Great Lakes did not participate actively 

 in the scientific activities of that survey^ Rather the Great Lakes 

 staff concentrated on limnological studies directed toward an appraisal 

 of the effects of pollution in the western end of Lake Erie and on 

 studies of "savings gear" (the first investigations of this type known 

 to have been carried out in North America) » The "hybrid" trap net de- 

 signed to reduce the capture and handling of undersized fish which was 

 recommended as a result of these studies has long since become a standard 

 gear. In fact many fishermen who at first opposed the recommendations 

 as radical and impractical later voluntarily exceeded the original 

 specifications in providing for the release of small fish. During 

 the course of the field operations, staff members seized upon the oc- 

 casion to amass large amounts of biological materials and data that 

 were later to form the basis for a niimber of publications. Indeed, 

 the store has not yet been fully exhausted. 



All of the several field projects carried out in the late 1920 's 

 and early 1930 's were similar to the Lake Erie investigations in that 

 they were initiated to obtain information on immediately pressing 

 problems; support from other agencies through allocation of funds, 

 assignment of personnel, or supply of equipment made them possible or 

 permitted operation on a far more effective scale than the relatively 

 modest Service budget would have allowed; they provided the opportunity 

 for the collection of biological materials and data^, Brief comments 

 on these projects are given in the following paragraphs. 



The experimental studies on pound-net meshes in Saginaw Bay (1928-30) 

 requested and supported by the State of Michigan, were carried cut in 

 an attempt to determine a single mesh size that might prove suitable 

 for all impounding nets in that region. Previously, three minimum legal 

 mesh sizes had been stipulated according to the species of fish. Inas- 

 much as a variety of species was ordinarily taken together, these regu- 

 lations obviously vrere burdensome and unenforceable. The recoiimendation 

 resulting from the experiments for a single maximum mesh size to replace 

 a series of minimum mesh sizes led to the solution of this vexing problem 

 not only in Saginaw Bay but in numerous other fishing areas in which the 

 catch is made up of a variety of species. 



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