204 U. S. BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



in a relatively short time it would be impossible to meet the need 

 for protection intelligently and preserve the fishery for future years. 

 As the primary function of the Bureau of Fisheries is the direction 

 of conservation activities, this lack of vital statistical information 

 should not be permitted to continue. Means of supplying the neces- 

 sary data have been canvassed thoroughly, and it is believed that 

 rectification must, in part, be the duty of the States. 



The fisheries are the property of the individual States. Most of 

 these have assumed the responsibility of regulation and patrol. 

 Thus, if their fisheries fail, the States themselves are responsible ; and 

 if they prosper, it will be due largely to the wisdom and farsighted- 

 ness of State administrators. Adequate statistics are indispensable 

 in the conservation of the fisheries, and the entire responsibility for 

 their collection can not be shifted to the Federal Government. The 

 duty of collecting such records plainly devolves upon the State gov- 

 ernments. The Bureau of Fisheries, with its limited funds and per- 

 sonnel, has been able to meet the demands of the situation to a 

 limited extent, but it is incapable of collecting statistics annually 

 and in such detail as is required. It can, however, properly assume 

 the task of coordinating the statistics collected by the States and is 

 already active in this field. In one region (the Pacific coast) there 

 has been sufficient progress to make it possible for the bureau to 

 summarize the statistics collected by supplementing them with a 

 limited amount of field work. The results of this effort, applied to 

 the year 1923, appeared in the Fisheries Industries Report for 1924, 

 and the work has continued during the past year in collecting and 

 compiling statistics for 1924. 



Statistics of the crab -fishery. — Investigations of the crab fishery of 

 the Chesapeake Bay, mentioned in the last report, were continued 

 during 1925, the States of Maryland and Virginia cooperating by 

 contributing the services of one man, each, to work under the direc- 

 tion of the Bureau of Fisheries. This investigation was undertaken 

 in order to meet urgent demands on the part of the crab industry 

 for an investigation that should yield the information necessary to 

 halt the decline in the yield of crabs that was felt severely at that 

 time. As many of the important biological features of the blue crab 

 had been studied carefully and now are well understood, the present 

 investigation was mainly of a statistical nature. The following ques- 

 tions demanded answers: 1. Is the abundance of crabs actually de- 

 clining? 2. Are the crab supplies of Maryland and Virginia inde- 

 pendent of each other ? 3. Is there preventable waste in the practices 

 of the crab fisheries and industries? 4. What recommendations can 

 be advanced to effect a remedy? 



The first question, as to abundance, was found to be somewhat 

 difficult to answer. The total yield shown by the periodical can- 

 vasses of Maryland and Virginia indicated a sharp decline when 

 1915 and 1920 statistics were compared. There were no statistics, 

 however, for the intervening years nor for years since 1920, and 

 because the total yield is not a good indicator of abundance it was 

 found necessary to collect further statistics on this subject. From 

 the books of several concerns it was found possible to determine 

 the average catch per boat, annually, back to 1917 in the dredge 

 fishery and to 1919 in the trot-line fishery. These, together with 

 previously published statistics on the average catch per boat, indi- 



