10 INLAND FISHERIES. 



necessary to argne that large sums of money are brought into the 

 State through the activities of those immediately interested in 

 this industry. 



Although the Commission is not in possession of facts respect- 

 ing the influence which the great sea traps, temporarily located 

 in the deeper water off the mouth of the bay, may have upon the 

 fishes within the limits of the bay, it is almost the universal 

 opinion among those who are handling large quantities of fish that 

 the capture during the past year has been of much more than aver- 

 age value. This is the more interesting since serious complaints of 

 damage wrought to the industry by wholesale methods of capture 

 have been infrequent. Although the " twine " destroys thousands 

 of barrels of fish which never even reach the market, and exten- 

 sive " pounding " leads to the destruction of enormous numbers 

 of enclosed fish, there is, at the present time, no other adequate 

 way of capturing and of retaining certain fish until the market is 

 in such a condition as to make their sale profitable. There is no 

 question but that the sea traps are so efficient as instruments of 

 capture that they frequently defeat their own purposes through 

 capturing such enormous quantities of fish that the market be- 

 comes overstocked. During the past season, as heretofore, fish 

 from these outside traps have not only been shipped from New- 

 port over the regular lines of transportation, but some of the 

 larger concerns have combined aud carried their own fish to New 

 York. 



Scup are the principal fish captured off shore, and often the 

 nets contain practically nothing else. Inasmuch as scup is one of 

 the most popular food fish, and since it appears quite imjDossible 

 for it to find a market when most abundant, it would seem that 

 some plan of canning the scup would develop an industry, in the 

 southern portion of the State, which might yield considerable 

 revenue. It will be the purpose of the Commission the coming 

 year to examine into the practicability aud feasibility of preserv- 

 ing these fish. 



The trails within the bay are often set as early as March, when 



