LOBSTER INVESTIGATIONS 65 



SESSIONAL PAPER No. 38a 



cause this year at Long Beach. Up to to August 2, forty-three females had extruded 

 eggs, and careful examination of twenty-eight of these showed that only five carried 

 fertilized eggs. The reason of this seems clear enough. With the fifty females which 

 wintered in the pound, there was, as already stated, only one male. Whether this one 

 male could fertilize the eggs of forty-nine females is certainly open to question. 



It is true that the department placed thirty males and thirty females (commer- 

 cial) in the pond or pound for experimental purposes this season, but, unfortunately, 

 eight of the males were poisoned, several of them were undersized, and six others died 

 from causes unknown. It will thus be seen that, if we take into account the relatively 

 small proportion of males to females, and the unfavourable conditions in which both 

 sexes were confined in the pound — I refer to the mud, not to feeding, which was care- 

 fully done, — it is not much wonder that many of the extruded eggs remained unfertil- 

 ized, then softened and dropped off. 



ANNUAL SPAWNING. 



It was intimated in my report for 1914 that some females which had extruded 

 eggs in August of that year were to be retained in the pound all winter, and might 

 throw some light upon the subject of annual spawning. Of forty-seven females placed 

 in the pound in midsummer, 1914, thirty had extruded eggs by the end of September. 

 There were confined with these females, fifteen males. Leaving out of consideration 

 ten females which were under 10 inches in length, the proportion of full-grown males 

 to females was 15 to 37, or nearly 1 male to 2 females. The result was that on the 8th 

 of April, 1915, when these thirty females were again examined, all bore fertilized eggs. 

 In other words, 64 per cent of the females placed in the pound last June carried fertil- 

 ized eggs to June of this year. As a matter of fact, most of the eggs were " laid " in 

 August, but the important point is the large number of berried females which resulted 

 from the experiment. These animals were not examined again until July 7, 1915, 

 when the following results were found: — 



12 had no eggs on them, being probably hatched off in the interval between 



April 8 and July 7. 

 12 were in the act of hatching their eggs. 



2 had newly extruded eggs upon them. 



1 was dead. 



1 was lost off the dip net in removing it from the compartment. 



2 could not at that date be accounted for, probably hidden in the mud. 



30 



The twelve which had old eggs upon them on April 8, but were without eggs on 

 July 7, were placed in a compartment by themselves and re-examined again on July 

 29, when seven of them were found to be carrying newly extruded eggs. 



These seven females with the two which bore new eggs on July 7 make a total of 

 nine, which had carried eggs in. 1914, and again extruded eggs in 1915. The remain- 

 ing five of the twelve escaped from the enclosure in which they were confined, and, as 

 a consequence, it became impossible to identify them from others in the pound, but 

 so far as these nine lobsters are concerned, annual spawning is an undoubted fact. 



One female, at least, of these seven, bore " bad " eggs, and one other, though the 

 eggs appeared normal and of the usual number, nevertheless, carried unfertilized eggs, 

 as shown by microscope examination. 



MORE FERTILIZED EGGS, 



The problem of problems in the lobster industry is not how to rear fry to the 

 crawling stage, but how to increase the number of females which carry fertilized eggs. 



