APPENDIX A LXVII 



it will be seen that notwithstanding the ever increasing vigour with 

 which the industry is being prosecuted, stimulated by the growing 

 demand with rising prices, the yield is falling off. There is not only 

 a decrease in the aggregate catch, but the lobsters now caught are much 

 smaller. This decrease in size is always one of the first signs of the 

 decadence of a fishery. 



In the case of lobster fishing, as in the case of so many other in- 

 dustries based on our natural resources, when the industry was 

 started the lobsters were so extraordinarily abundant that the fisher- 

 men never dreamed that the day would come when any protection would 

 be required, but the Government has been obliged to enact a series 

 of regulations ever more restrictive in character, without which the 

 industry would have been in a much more serious condition than at 

 present. These regulations, however, are not always effectively 

 enforced, and as stated by Mr. W. A. Found, the Superintendent of 

 Fisheries for Canada, in his excellent paper read before the Commis- 

 sion of Conservation in the year 1912, "It is very much to be feared 

 that if more restrictive regulations are not enforced we can expect 

 nothing but a continued decline in the lobster fisheries." 



The time at my disposal permits me merely to mention 

 two other industries which are more or less closely connected with 

 the fishing trade. These are the hunting of the whale and of the walrus. 



Concerning the whaling industry in Davis Straits, Baffin Land 

 and Hudson Bay, Captain Bernier in his account of the first cruise of 

 the "Arctic" in the year 1906-07 writes as follows: — 



"In the height of the whaling industry there were from 600 

 to 800 whaling vessels in active service in the Atlantic, Pacific, and 

 Arctic Oceans, hailing from the United States and from ports in the 

 United Kingdon. There are now scarcely 50. There has not been, 

 and cannot be, a revival of the industry, until there has first been a 

 renewal of the supply of whales, and at the present time there appears 

 to be no prospect of this. It must, therefore, be admitted that for 

 the present at least the supply of whales is exhausted. Taking into 

 consideration the state of things at present, a closed season should 

 now be enforced, and remain so for ten or fifteen years. The whaling 

 industry will soon be a thing of the past if no enactment is made for 

 its temporary restriction." 



The industry is now altogether in the hands of Americans, who 

 having killed off all the whales in the waters of North Eastern Canada, 

 have transferred their vessels to the Arctic waters which are reached 

 from the Pacific Coast, and are there following the same process of 

 extermination which has already led to the practical annihilation of 

 the South Sea whale. 



