34 American Fisheries Society 



full sized fish, his loss is still greater. The loss to the dealer is 

 correspondingly large, as is also the food loss to the public. 

 Although we, the Ohio hatchery people and ourselves, have 

 produced during the last sixteen years enough fish to equal six 

 times the number of minutes that have elapsed since the beginning 

 of the Christian era, we can not hope to keep pace with the 

 natural, the legal and economic, together with this wanton and 

 criminal destruction. Now this being the case at a time when it 

 behooves every one to conserve to the fullest extent every article 

 of food, when every department of the government and all state 

 officials are urging economy in the use of all kinds of foodstuffs 

 and that every effort be put forth for the production of the same, 

 surely some action should be taken by those in authority to prevent 

 the continuance of this great waste of one of the most wholesome 

 foods that nature has given us. As a preventative we believe the 

 most efficient means would be the enactment of a universal law 

 by all the states bordering upon Lake Erie and by Canada as well, 

 such a law should fix a size limit on all fish of whatever species 

 are taken for market and make this limit large enough so that 

 every fish whould have reached maturity and had a chance to 

 reproduce at least once before it would be legal to remove it from 

 the water. But whether this or some other means is adopted, 

 something should be done and that speedily or many of our best 

 fishes will soon become so nearly extinct that it will no longer be 

 profitable to follow fishing as an industry. 



ADDITIONAL NOTES. 



Undersized Herring. — Many of the herring caught on the 

 Canada side this spring ran very small, as did also some that 

 were caught on the American side. I was informed by one of the 

 Canadian Fishery officials that, as late as July 30th, he saw herring 

 that had been caught on the Canada side and shipped to the 

 United States that would run from four to ten fish to the pound 

 and some of them would weigh no more than an ounce each. 



Length of Whitefish. — The average length of 200 male whitefish 

 measured at Monroe, Mich., was 16% inches and of the females 

 a fraction over 17 inches, and these were the smallest of a lot of 

 six thousand. 



