EFFECTS OF MENHADEN FISHING. 277 
This opinion has been approved and concurred in by Professor Baird, 
Colonel McDonald, and Dr. Hugh M. Smith, than whom there are no higher authori- 
ties on the subject to be found. Assuming that it is even approximately correct, 
can any intelligent person, even with the greatest stretch of fancy, imagine that 
the comparatively few menhaden taken by man can in any way affect the fish 
that prey on the menhaden, which have for thousands of years been taking 
thousands of menhaden for every one that man has taken during a few years? 
CONCLUSION. 
There can be no question but that the fishing by man has in no way dimin- 
ished the quantity of menhaden in the ocean, the only effect having been to 
retard or change the movements of small lots, in and about specially located 
bodies of water. Nor has it had the minutest effect on the predaceous fish that 
feed upon them, except the possible decreasing of sharks in the waters north of 
Cape Charles, and this may be due to other causes than taking them in nets with 
menhaden. Extensive investigations made under the authority of Dr. Hugh M. 
Smith, of the United States Bureau of Fisheries, have clearly demonstrated the 
fact that food fish are seldom taken in the menhaden nets and never in any 
quantities. The writer, first and last, has seen perhaps 100,000,000 menhaden 
taken, among all of which there were not 1,000 food fish of any kind. 
When we consider the illimitable vastness of the ocean’s extent; the marvel- 
ous fecundity of the menhaden, one female producing sometimes 18,000 eggs; the 
incalculable numbers there must be in all the waters, as many as 500,000 having 
been taken from a space of less than an acre’s surface; we can inevitably reach 
but one conclusion: That they were designed in the all wise provisions of nature 
for man’s use and benefit, and it behooves man, with such skill as his wisdom 
and ingenuity can devise, to take them and use them, believing that for every 
one he can take each year probably tens of thousands die and are destroyed by 
other agencies. 
DISCUSSION. 
The PRESIDENT. The menhaden always provokes discussion. I know the Bureau 
of Fisheries has for twenty years been making observations at Woods Hole on the breed- 
ing habits in the neighborhood of Buzzards Bay and Vineyard Sound. I dare say that 
Doctor Smith will give information in regard to the results of the observations made 
upon the breeding habits of the menhaden in the north. 
Dr. Hucu M. Sirs (secretary-general). Mr. President and ladies and gentlemen, 
I do not intend to discuss the menhaden question, but there is just one point brought 
up by the last speaker to which I would invite attention. Mr. Hathaway is undoubtedly 
in error in regard to the spawning of the menhaden. The spawning habits of this fish 
are now pretty well known, thanks to the efforts of the United States Bureau of Fish- 
