PROGRESS IN BLOLOGICAL INQUIRIES, 1936 3 
In the field of commercial fishery investigation the North and 
Middle Atlantic section, with headquarters at the Harvard Biological 
Laboratories, Cambridge, Mass., is concerned with the marine ‘fish- 
eries of New England and the coastal fisheries of the Middle Atlantic 
States. The South Atlantic and Gulf section, with headquarters at. 
New Orleans, La., is engaged at the present time in a study of the 
great shrimp fishery from North Carolina to Texas. The Pacific 
coast and Alaska section, with headquarters at the United States 
Fisheries Biological Laboratory, Seattle, Wash., is engaged in a study 
of the fisheries of the Columbia River, Puget Sound. and Alaska. 
The Great Lakes section maintains headquarters at the University 
of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and has been engaged for several years in 
a comprehensive study of the commercial fisheries of the Great Lakes. 
These units cover the major regions of the United States where im- 
portant commercial fisheries are » prosecuted, with the exception of the 
southern Pacific coastal area. 
The fields of marine shellfisheries and fishery problems in interior 
waters are not organized upon a regional basis. The section on 
marine shellfish investigations 1s concerned primarily with oyster 
culture and incidentally with clam culture and related problems. 
Headquarters are maintained in Washington but field laboratories 
are established at Milford, Conn., and Beaufort, N. C. Temporary 
laboratories were maintained at Apalachicola, Fla., and during the 
early part of the year at Olympia, Wash. 
Studies of interior fisheries are conducted by the sections on aqui- 
cultural investigations and on investigations in interior waters. The 
former is concerned primarily with the problems of artificial propa- 
gation of fishes and the successful stocking of food and game fishes 
in streams and lakes. The latter is concerned primarily with the 
study of pollution in interior waters and with mussel propagation in 
the Mississippi drainage. Headquarters for aquicultural investiga- 
tions are maintained in : Washington but field activities are conducted 
at experimental hatcheries at Pittsford, Vt., and Leetown, W. Va. 
Nutrition studies are conducted in cooperation with Cornell Uni- 
versity and the State of New York at Ithaca and Cortland, N. Y. 
A pathological laboratory is maintained in the fisheries laboratory 
at Seattle, Wash., and other field studies are conducted at the Bu- 
reau’s fish-cultural stations, particularly in the Southern States. In- 
vestigators in interior waters have excellent laboratory and _ office 
facilities at the University of Missouri in Columbia. 
The section on ichthyological investigations is housed in the labor- 
atories of the Bureau of Fisheries at “Washington, where extensive 
reference collections of fishes are stored and. where ‘the excellent ich- 
thyological collections of the United States National Museum are 
readily available. 
Progress reports of the investigations conducted by the various 
sections, prepared in the main by the section heads, are given in the 
following pages. 
COOPERATION 
In previous reports of the Division of Scientific Inquiry it has been 
a pleasure to acknowledge extensive cooperation in fishery investiga- 
tions on the part of many agencies throughout the country. Cor dial 
