INTERNATIONAL REGULATIONS OF FISHERIES ON THE HIGH SEAS. 145 
erel, or 7,596 per vessel employed, Those who favor restriction on the sea fish- 
eries claim that the length of the closed season and the period of years which 
the restriction covered were too short for favorable results. 
Other prominent enactments of a similar nature were the numerous herring 
restrictions in England, Scotland, and some of the continental countries, and 
especially the herring and mackerel protective regulations resulting from the 
Anglo-French convention of 1839. But it does not appear that these regula- 
tions had any effect whatever on the increase or the decrease of these migratory 
fishes, which seem to depend on such natural causes as fluctuations in food 
supply, the destruction of brood by storms, etc., and that the abundance of the 
fishes themselves can not be seriously affected by restrictive legislation so long 
as the present conditions of supply and demand exist. 
Since this legislation interferes with the established uses and customs of the 
fishermen, the burden is upon those who advocate it to prove that the benefit 
will outweigh the inconvenience. Ever since the influential voice of Huxley 
was lifted in its defense,” the policy of unrestricted use of the migratory species 
has continued to grow. This view has been strongly supported by Prof. W. C. 
McIntosh in Great Britain, by Dr. Hjort and Dr. Dahl in Norway, by Prof. 
Baird, Dr. Goode, and Mr. Eugene Blackford’ in America, and by many other 
eminent authorities. 
So far as regards the demersal or bottom fishes—the cod, haddock, halibut, 
flatfish, ete.—our present knowledge of the remedial effects of fishery restriction 
is so slight as scarcely to furnish a satisfactory basis for even national legisla- 
tion in territorial waters, much less for complicated international regulations. 
A review of these regulations already established shows that the arrangement 
of joint action is a tedious and difficult matter, and ratification of the convention 
is always uncertain. Indeed, except so far as concerns the police of the fisheries, 
a“The best thing for governments to do in relation to the herring fisheries is to let them alone, 
except in so far as the police of the sea is concerned. With this proviso let people fish how they like, 
as they like, and when they like. There is not a particle of evidence that anything man does has an 
appreciable influence on the stock of herrings. ~It will be time to meddle when any satisfactory evi- 
dence that mischief is being done is produced.” (Huxley, in Popular Science Monthly, August, 1881.) 
And again: ‘‘Every legislative restriction means the creation of a new offense. In the case of 
fishery, it means that a simple man of the people, earning a scanty livelihood by hard -toil, shall be 
liable to fine and imprisonment for doing that which he and his fathers before him have, up to that 
time, been free todo. If the general interest requires that this burden should be put upon the fisher- 
men—well and good. But if it does not—if indeed there is any doubt about the matter, I think that 
the man who made the unnecessary law deserves a heavier punishment than the man who breaks it.”’ 
(Huxley, ‘Inaugural Address,” International Fisheries Exhibition (London), 1883.) 
6 In testifying before a. United States Senate committee in 1886, the late Mr. Blackford, who was 
one of the best informed fish dealers this or any other country has produced, stated that formerly he 
had thought protection necessary for the mackerel and other ocean fishes, ‘“but when I got my material 
all together, I found the facts were entirely opposite to the views which I had entertained, and the 
more I looked into the subject the more I became impressed that there was no necessity for legislation 
for the protection of any of the free-swimming open-sea fishes.’ (Bulletin United States Fish Com- 
mission, vol. XVII, p. 212.) 
B. B. F. 1908—10 
