Mollan. — Commercial Fish Conservation 75 



the greater part of the Atlantic coast striped bass. And yet the 

 fish are being taken there in utter disregard of the rights of the 

 fisheries of every other state on the seaboard, the entire striped 

 bass supply of these other coastal states recklessly diminished 

 by the destruction of the spawn bearing parent fish, and a highly 

 valuable commercial fishery rendered unimportant where it has 

 not been wiped out. 



It is conceivable that stream pollution may be a matter of 

 direct concern only to a certain state, when it relates to waterways 

 which have not been chosen by migratory fishes as the scenes of 

 their procreative activities. But when a stream has been selected 

 by a fish species to be the nursery of its young, as the Connecticut 

 has been chosen by the shad or the Roanoke by the striped bass, 

 then the conditions in that stream and the laws governing them 

 are no longer properly to be left to the control of the individual 

 state. The stream, the spawning beds, the regulation of fishing 

 with respect to the spawning fish, straightway become the business 

 of the nation. To assume that the fishes of the waters of many 

 states become the legitimate prey of the people of a single state 

 to which they pay a temporary visit for the purpose of reproduc- 

 tion, and are rightfully to be exploited to the point of extermina- 

 tion, without adequate regulation, by the people of that state, is 

 to deny that any American state owes the slightest obligation or 

 duty to any other; which is, of course, an untenable position in 

 law and ethics. 



By sticking to the simpler, less complex and more striking 

 demonstrations of the problem it should be possible to bring to 

 members of congress the conviction that unless all the food 

 resources and industries embodied in the groups of salt water 

 fishes that spawn in inlets and rivers are to be wiped out, the 

 federal government must assume control. 



The pollution of the waters of spawning areas must be forbidden 

 by national enactment. 



Fishing on spawning areas must be forbidden and the fish 

 protected against capture while on their way to the areas, by 

 national enactment. 



The netting of immature fishes must be prevented by regulating 

 the size of net meshes, by national enactment. 



