46 REPOET OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES. 



prevailed and ice formed about the nets, brood fish to the number 

 of 13,411 were obtained from the fishermen. Spawning occurred 

 from March 25 to April 5, after which the 12,811 adult fish on hand 

 were released. The eggs deposited naturally by the fish while being 

 held in live cars numbered 129,544,000. About 2,500,000 eggs were 

 sent to another station; the remainder produced 119,240,100 fry that 

 were deposited on the local spawning grounds. 



The recently established field hatchery on the Atchafalaya River in 

 Louisiana was operated for buffalofish in the spring of 1920, and had 

 its most successful season. The hatchery had been enlarged in antici- 

 pation of an increased take of eggs, and additional hatching jars to 

 the number of 260 were installed, making 440 jars in all. The first 

 eggs were secured on February 23 and the last on April 4. The col- 

 lections from the fishermen's nets aggregated 236,420,000 eggs, or 

 more than 100,000,000 in excess of the previous year's production. 

 The plants numbered 174,585,000. 



MARINE FISH HATCHING. 



Four species of marine food fishes are hatched at the Bureau's 

 three seaside stations in Maine and Massachusetts, namely, the winter 

 flounder, the cod, the haddock, and the pollock. The extreme severity 

 of the winter interfered with all branches of the work and reduced 

 the egg collections by about 800,000,000. 



The winter flounder, which now supports extensive shore fisheries 

 that annually contribute many million pounds of excellent food to 

 the markets of the New England and Middle Atlantic States, is 

 handled at the three hatcheries and is the species produced in largest 

 numbers. At the Boothbay Harbor station 792,853,000 eggs were 

 secured and incubated without undue loss, the fry being deposited in 

 the local bays. At the Gloucester hatchery 155,810,000 eggs were ob- 

 tained. The season's output for the Woods Hole station was the 

 smallest for five years, owing to weather conditions. In the Waquoit 

 field 611,570,000 eggs were obtained under great difficulty, and 

 16,616,000 eggs came from Hadley Harbor and Quisset Harbor. 

 Later operations in Narragansett Bay yielded 238,318,000 eggs. The 

 aggregate collections for the Woods Hole station in all fields were 

 866,504,000 eggs of fair quality. With the exception of 35,000,000 

 eyed eggs and fry consigned to Jamaica Bay, N. Y., the local waters 

 received the plants of fry. The total deposits of flounder fry from 

 the three hatcheries were 1,603,080,000. 



Cod eggs for hatching purposes, obtained from the fishermen's 

 catches in the case of the Gloucester station and from brood fish in 

 the case of the AVoods Hole station, numbered 570,740,000 and 223,- 

 465,000, respectively, the latter number being produced by 2,825 

 adult fish held in the. cistern under the hatchery. The boats of the 

 Gloucester haddock fishermen, visited by spawn takers from the local 

 hatchery, yielded 303,800,000 eggs during the period from January 

 14 to April 30. In a similar way, during November, December, and 

 January, 954,800,000 pollock eggs were gathered from fish on their 

 way to market. The quality of the eggs was poor and a rather lieavy 

 mortality occurred in hatching; 557,685,000 fry were planted. 



Tlie Bureau has taken up in a tentative way the matter of salvag- 

 ing the enormous numbers of ripe eggs of cod, haddock, and other 



