PEOGRESS IN BIOLOGICAL INQUIRIES, 1932 115 



protection, and that a necessary fund be provided for racking the Cle 

 EUim River below the dam site. As in the case of the Prosser screen, 

 the field services of the Bureau of Reclamation and the Bureau of 

 Fisheries cooperated fully to obtain this means of protection, but 

 the matter came to a standstill before the higher authorities of the 

 Reclamation Service, the position being taken that nothing coidd be 

 done as the appropriation for the project carried no specific item for 

 fish-protective work. 



Needjor a definite 'policy. — The experience of the Bureau of Fish- 

 eries in seeking to obtain very necessary fish protection at the Prosser 

 power development and at Cle Elum Dam has brought out strongly 

 the necessity for the determination of a definite policy between the 

 Departments of Commerce and Interior which will provide the basis 

 for securing proper safeguards to fish life on those Government proj- 

 ects where anadromous fish are affected. Until such a policy is 

 adopted no tangible results can be secured by the field services. 

 Furthermore, it should be provided that on streams where anadro- 

 mous fish are affected all plans for new construction by the Depart- 

 ment of the Interior be submitted to the Commissioner of Fisheries 

 for recommendations as to fish protection, exactly as is now done in 

 the case of private concerns seeking permits for power developments 

 before the Federal Power Commission. Such a procedure would 

 allow for economical planning of the fish-protective works, would 

 permit of the project appropriation carrying a definite item for fish 

 protection, and would allow the construction of the recommended 

 devices along with the building of the project. 



GREAT LAKES FISHERY INVESTIGATIONS 



Investigations of the important commercial fisheries of the Great 

 Lakes during the past year have been concerned almost wholly with 

 the abundance and distribution of the various species of food fishes 

 and the eft'ects upon the fish populations of the various types of 

 commercial fishing gear. Although the yield of the commercial fish- 

 eries in these waters has been maintained in the aggregate for several 

 decades, it is generally known and recognized that depletion of the 

 important species is occurring with greater rapidity in some lakes 

 than in others, and that total production has been maintained by the 

 substitution of less valuable species for the ones that are more valu- 

 able and better known. Lacking sufficiently detailed statistics of 

 the fishery yield, in the States bordering these waters, the fact of 

 depletion is taken for granted and no serious attempt has yet been 

 made to study the fishery from a quantitive standpoint, tracing vari- 

 ation in yield as has been done with such success in the marine 

 fisheries of this country. In recent years several of the Great Lakes 

 States have adopted an adequate system of fishery statistics sufficiently 

 detailed to measure variations in abundance of the fish stock. Until 

 these records have accumulated, however, for a sufficient period of 

 years to make their analysis worth while, the efforts of the Bureau's 

 technical staff, under the direction of Dr. John Van Oosten, are 

 directed toward the correction of abuses in the commercial fishery 

 and especially the reduction of the tremendous wastage of immature 

 and undersized fish that annually reaches impressive proportions. 



