for fiscal year 1942 recorded in table 1 do not 

 represent relief to the poverty of Great Lakes 

 Fishery Investigations since as is explained in 

 the footnote to the table the greater part of the 

 funds was required to cover the costs of the 

 activities of the United States members of the 

 International Board of Inquiry for the Great 

 Lakes Fisheries. Thus Great Lakes Fishery 

 Investigations passed through a 15 -year period 

 during which the amount available annually to 

 meet all operating expenses --travel, subsist- 

 ence, communications, supplies, equipment, 

 wages of temporary employees, . . . --consistent- 

 ly was less than $3,000 and in 2 years dropped 

 below $1,000. Field operations of any conse- 

 quence were out of the question . The only pro - 

 jects worth listing were the 1937-38 survey of 

 the fisheries of the Potagannissing Bay, Lake 

 Huron, supported by the Michigan Department 

 of Conservation, and the 1938 survey of the 

 fisheries of the Red Lakes, Minnesota, carried 

 out in cooperation with the Office of Indian Af- 

 fairs . Otherwise, field work was limited to 

 "spot-checks" of problem situations or brief 

 excursions to obtain materials needed to fill 

 gaps in studies based on collections of the 1927- 

 32 period. 



This 1933-47 period was nevertheless 

 one in which numerous significant publications 

 were issued- -and that despite the loss of Dea- 

 son through transfer in 1940 and the nearly 

 full-time occupation of the entire staff with the 

 activities of the war-time agency, Office of the 

 Coordinator of Fisheries, during 1942-45. 

 Prevented by lack of funds from the continuation 

 of past projects or the Initiation of any new re- 

 search, staff members devoted their time to 

 the completion of reports based principally on 

 the collections of the earlier years when great- 

 er allotments and especially the liberal support 

 of outside agencies made field operations pos- 

 sible . Exceptional as the number of publications 

 may have been in relation to size of staff and 

 operational funds available, and valuable as 

 they are as sources of information on the Great 

 Lakes fish and fisheries, they do not reflect the 

 type of research that the staff members would 

 have desired and that has long been urgently 

 needed on the Great Lakes. Even the original 

 collections were handicapped by the impossibility 

 of scheduling observations and sampling as a 

 well -planned biological research program would 



require; rather, the collections had to be made 

 as opportunity presented itself while major at- 

 tention was given the "emergency" situation 

 that had drawn outside assistance. Still more 

 damaging was the lack of the continuity of ob- 

 servation that Is so essential to an understanding 

 of the changes that take place in populations. 

 The effective use of the large body of informa- 

 tion amassed during the first 20-odd years after 

 the establishment of Great Lakes Fishery In- 

 vestigations will depend on the continuity of 

 subsequent researches. 



Throughout much of this "intermediate" 

 period of Great Lakes Fishery Investigations, 

 Van Oosten, as Chief, devoted considerable at- 

 tention to problems of fishery regulations. He 

 attended many public and legislative hearings, 

 prepared numerous memoranda on proposed or 

 desirable legislation, and worked for interstate 

 and international cooperation in the establish- 

 ment of more restrictive and uniform regulations. 

 At the same time he published a series of popular 

 and semipopular articles in which he stressed: 

 the progressive depletion of the major fisheries 

 of the lakes; the need for immediate and drastic 

 restrictions on fishing pressure to save the in- 

 dustry from collapse; the seeming futility, as 

 indicated by past experiences, of attaining ade- 

 quate and uniform regulations through voluntary 

 cooperation of the lake states and Ontario; the 

 desirability of a treaty with Canada for joint in- 

 vestigation and control of the Great Lakes fish- 

 eries. The publicity thus given to Great Lakes 

 fishery problems was a major factor in the re- 

 quest of the Council of State Governments for 

 the appointment of the International Board of 

 Inquiry for the Great Lakes Fisheries (on which 

 Van Oosten served as one of the United States 

 members) and ultimately in the negotiation of a 

 treaty between the United States and Canada for 

 international investigation and control of the 

 Great Lakes fisheries ._' 



3/ Because of the strong opposition of one state 

 and of much of the fishing industry, this treaty 

 was never considered by the Foreign Relations 

 Committee of the United States Senate. It was 

 withdrawn from that Committee in 1955. 



