[9] THE STATUS OF THE FISH COMMISSION. 1147 



shoals or iu tlie bays may be embarrassed, and the numbers of each 

 school decimated, particularly if, as in the case of the herring, the eggs 

 are adhesive and heavy. 



Sea fishes spawning in the estuaries are affected by wholesale capture 

 with stake nets, much in the same manner, though in a less degree, 

 than salmon in the rivers. An example is apparently found in the 

 teuiporarj' depression in the scuppaug or porgy fishery of Na.rragansett 

 Bay. 



Our shad and alewife fisheries are protected by an economic code of 

 laws, different iu the different States, and in the different rivers of each 

 State. The most satisfactory laws are those which regulate the dates 

 at which fishing must begin and close, and prescribe at least one day in 

 the week, usually Sunday, in which the ascent of the fish must not be 

 interrupted. Massachusetts regulates its stake-net fisheries along the 

 coast in a similar manner. 



Migratory, semi-migratory, or wandering fishes, ranging in schools or 

 singly over broad stretches of ocean, mackerel, herring, menhaden, 

 bluefish, bonito or squeteague, are apparently beyond the influence of 

 human agency, especially since they spawn at a distance from the coast, 

 or since the adults, when about to spawn, cannot be reached by any 

 kind of fishery apparatus. Their fecundity is beyond comprehension, 

 and in many instances their eggs float free near the surface, and are 

 quickly disseminated over broad areas. The conclusions gained by Pro- 

 fessor Baird tally exactly with those of Professor Huxley, that the 

 number of any one kind of oceanic fish killed by man is perfectly in- 

 significant when compared with the destruction effected by their natural 

 enemies. 



Their movements are no more to be anticipated than those of the 

 atmosphere, and in many instances, with no intelligible cause, some of 

 the most abundant species, the bluefish, the chub-mackerel, the little 

 tunny, the scuj^paug, and the bonito have absented themselves for con- 

 siderable periods of years. 



The chart showing the history of the mackerel fishery for the past 

 eighty years, hanging in the fisheries gallery of the IsTational Museum, 

 is an illustration of this statement. The variations in abundance can- 

 not be explained by any facts in our possession, and the yield in 1882 

 was greater than ever before notwithstanding the fiict that the fisheries 

 of the past ten years have been prosecuted with unusual vigor. The 

 remarkable change iu the habitat of the menhaden, occurring iu 1880, 

 and promising to be permanent, was certainly not the effect of over- 

 fishing, though fifteen years ago it would have been regarded as such. 

 When the production of a region falls iu two successive summers from 

 617,000 to 550 barrels, it is evident that nature, not man, is the cause. 



The variations in the abundance of cod and haddock along the coast 

 and on the banks within the last ha-lf century have been equally inex- 

 plicable, 



