190 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES 



Q. How do you feel sure that this statement about spawning on the coast is cor- 

 rect? — A. By actual capture of the fish in the spawning season, and by dredging up 

 their eggs from the bottom with apparatus we use for such purposes. 



Q. Is herring a very common fish on the United States coast ? — A. It is exceedingly 

 abundant. It is not utilized at all to the extent of the capacity. The herring is 

 not a very favorite fish. It is a cheap fish ; and as there are so many better fish on 

 the coast, it is not very marketable for food. It is sold in great quantities, but at 

 very low prices, and is used only by the poorer classes of the community. Of course, 

 it is used for bait; but as fresh fish it is very seldom seen on the tables of the well- 

 to-do people. 



Q. Is it dried and pickled ? — A. They are pickled to some extent. Some are smoked. 

 A great many are worked up in the form of bloatera, and in this form it is very much 

 sought after. 



Q. You have been at the places where the business is carried on ? — A. I have seen 

 20 or 30 large boats, of a capacity of perhaps 500 barrels or more, filled with herring, 

 lying at the wharf at Boston at one time. They are boats probably from 4 to 10 

 tons. 



Q. Market boats? — A. They are open boats, known as herring boats, and the coast 

 now is lined with the boats with gill-nets catching herring for the fall trade. 



Q. Have you anything to say about the predaceous fish, such as the shark and dog- 

 fish ? Do you think they do a great deal of harm to the food-fish ? — A. They consti- 

 tute a very important factor in the question of the abundance of fish on our coast. 

 They destroy enormous weights and quantities of all the useful fish, and in proportion 

 as they increase in numbers the food-fish diminish, and vice versa. They perform the 

 same function as bluefish ; they are constantly in the pursuit of other fish and destroy- 

 ing them. 



Q. There is no probability of changing that relation which fish seem to bear to one 

 another? — A. They all have the relation of attack, defense, pursuit, and flight. 



Q. But, notwithstanding that, I suppose they belong to what you call the balance 

 of nature? — A. The balances of nature are such that it is extremely difficult to say 

 what will be the effect on the fisheries of destroying or multiplying a particular stock 

 of fish. The sharks, for instance, are destroying great quantities of food-fish. A new 

 enterprise has just been started, and will be opened in the course of a few weeks, to 

 utilize the sharks, porpoises, dogfish, and tunnies. An establishment expects to work 

 up twelve million pounds annually of those fish, for which heretofore there has not 

 been a market. They are caught in great quantities on the shores, but not utilized, 

 and now there is to be a market for them, and the parties offer the same price for 

 them as they do for menhadeu. 



Q. Where is the company started? — A. At Wood's Holl, Mass. TI13 company ex- 

 pects to keep two or three steamers constantly traversing the coast from Block Island 

 to Penobscot Bay, or Bay of Fundy, and the company advertises that it will take all 

 dogfish, sharks, porpoises, blacklish, and other offal that may be offered to it, up to 

 the amount, I think, of 20 or 25 tons a day. By a new process the oil will be ex- 

 tracted without heat, leaving the meat entirely free of grease, and, when it is dried, 

 it will be ground up to make what they call fish flour, or meal which can be used for 

 fertilizing purposes or food, as you please. The same substance is made from cod in 

 Norway and is an article of food. It makes a nice form of food, and is used as fish- 

 cakes and other preparations. 



Q. It can be made up like flour ? — A. Yes, and can be mixed up without any diffi- 

 culty. The effect of the abstraction of twelve million pounds of those predaceous 

 fish will undoubtedly be very great. Whether, as those fish eat bluefish, it may not 

 allow bluefish to multiply, and in that way restore the balance again, it is impossible 

 to say; but if it was to take bluefish also, we would relax very largely the pressure 

 on eatable fish, and they would necessarily increase. 



Q. Is the philosophy of that substantially that when one kind of predaceous fish 



