REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES. 37 



grade clerks, firemen, and messengers, but did not authorize any 

 advance in the salaries of those on whose work the efficiency of the 

 Bureau is more directly dependent. The experience of another year 

 has made more apparent the desirability of making remuneration 

 more commensurate with duties and responsibilities. 



The Bureau is in constant receipt of requests from Members of 

 Congress and state authorities for special investigations and experi- 

 ments in the interests of the public fisheries, and in many cases prompt 

 compliance with these legitimate demands is difficult or impossible, 

 because the personnel has not kept pace with either the growth of the 

 work or the increase of general appropriations. There are certain 

 fisheries to which, on account of their peculiar requirements, it has 

 not been possible to render the service which those engaged in them 

 have the right to expect. To the oyster industry, for instance, which 

 yields $16,000,000 annually, about 30 per cent of the value of the 

 entire fisheries of the United States, the Bureau's assistance has been 

 wholly inadequate. Proportionately to the value of the respective 

 fisheries, sixty-five dollars are profitably expended in shad culture 

 for every dollar spent for the benefit of the oyster industry. The 

 inequality arises not from the inability to allot money from the appro- 

 priations, but to the lack of trained and experienced men. Fish- 

 cultural methods can not be applied in oyster culture, and the only 

 valuable aid which can be offered is through the medium of research 

 and practical experiment, which experience has shown lead to profit- 

 able and lasting benefits from disproportionally small expenditures. 

 For carrying on such work provision should be made for additional 

 scientific assistants. 



SPONGE LAW. 



The act of June 20, 1906, to provide for the protection of the 

 sponge fisheries of the United States on the high seas of the Gulf of 

 Mexico and the Straits of Florida, has shown itself futile and impos- 

 sible of enforcement. The purpose of this law was to prohibit the 

 fishery by diving in depths of less than 50 feet, and during the period 

 from May 1 to October 1 to prevent the taking, by whatever means, 

 outside of the 3-mile limit, of sponges smaller than 4 inches in 

 diameter. 



The offenses aimed at are not specifically prohibited, but they 

 were supposed to be prevented by the prohibition of certain subsid- 

 iary acts — the landing, curing, or offering for sale in the United 

 States of sponges taken in contravention of the real purpose of 

 the law. To secure a conviction it is therefore necessary to estab- 

 lish a connection between the act of taking under the objection- 

 able circumstances and certain subsequent and secondary acts which 

 per se are innocuous. A diving vessel operating during the close 



