Mollan. — Commercial Fish Conservation 73 



cause of fish life owes substantially everything. Without him, 

 the very word "conservation" as applied to the fauna of our seas 

 and waterways would be wholly meaningless. Instead of hope 

 for the future we should have only regrets for a hopelessly dead 

 past. The entire structure of present conservation effort and the 

 blue print of the more ambitious efforts of the future are planned 

 from data which these scientists, both professional and amateur, 

 have supplied and are continuing to supply. 



To the person already attracted to the general subject of fish 

 life, nothing could be of more absorbing interest than the minutiae 

 of the various steps by which our provable volume of fish lore has 

 been gathered together. 



Unfortunately, decision as to what steps shall be taken for 

 the conservation of fish life, or how soon or on how considerable 

 a scale, does not rest with those who have hitherto taken either a 

 specialized or a general interest in the subject. Nor does there 

 seem to be even a remote likelihood that there can be set up, in 

 the minds of those on whom those decisions do rest, any ponderable 

 degree of interest in the finer details of research and experiment. 

 Legislators, congressmen, those persons in authority from whom 

 we must seek action founded on economic necessity, will not use 

 the reading glass to study the microscopic details which make up 

 the sum of our knowledge of fish life and fisheries necessities. 

 We shall do well if we can soon get enough of them to glance at 

 the poster drawings which we must presistently shake before 

 their eyes. 



Such propaganda as the American Fisheries Society and 

 kindred associations shall set afoot in the interest of the commercial 

 fisheries must be presented in bold, splashy drawing. It must 

 have few lines, and striking ones. It must be planned and 

 calculated to catch the eye and the fancy of him who runs. It 

 must be burdened with as little as possible of that circumstantiality 

 which appeals to the initiate, but which is merely "dry scientific 

 stuff" to the average citizen and to the average legislator. 



Can we do better than to concentrate, in any effort to rehabili- 

 tate and preserve our commercial fisheries, on such obvious and 

 elementary matters as the following: 



1. Preservation of the availability, to the fish, of their natural 

 spawning beds. 



