WORK OF THE INTERNATIONAL FISHERIES COMMISSION OF 
GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 
as 
By DAVID STARR JORDAN, 
International Fisheries Commissioner. 
J 
The International Fisheries Commission represents a most interesting effort 
to settle at once a number of problems in international law, in constitutional 
law, in conflict of laws, in equity, and at the same time in biology, for no statute 
for the preservation and propagation of fishes can be effective unless the nature 
of the individual species, its food, its distribution, and its habits are primarily 
and persistently kept in view. 
The boundary waters of the United States and Canada include two of the 
greatest fishing areas of the world. The Great Lakes constitute the greatest 
body of fresh water belonging to any single system, and are richer in fish life 
than any other. Puget Sound and the adjacent waters are part of the great 
Alaskan system, the region of all the world richest in salmon. 
In these boundary waters the statutes of the Dominion of Canada, those 
of the different Provinces, and those of the different States of the American 
Union are more or less at cross-purposes with each other. Over Lake Erie, for 
example—the richest of the lakes in fisheries—four States and one Province 
claim jurisdiction, with the greatest variation in theory and practice of fish 
protection. In the treaty of April 11, 1908, an attempt is made to remedy this 
condition of affairs by the adoption by Great Britain and the United States of 
identical statutes relating to the fisheries, these statutes to hold for a period of 
four years without change, except by the joint action of both nations. Under 
this treaty two commissioners have been appointed to draw up this code of 
fishery statutes. These are Hon. Samuel Tovel Bastedo, of Toronto, as repre- 
sentative of Great Britain, and the present writer as representative of the United 
States. It is agreed that the code shall be submitted to both nations for adop- 
tion by the 1st of January, 1909. 
This treaty involves a number of interesting principles: (1) Joint interna- 
tional action in the case of migratory animals moving from waters of one nation 
to those of another, in place of national control on the two sides of the boundary; 
(2) substitution of international legislation in this regard for that of the several 
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