76 American Fisheries Society 



In other words, there can be no adequate betterment of con- 

 ditions with relation to our migratory coastal fishes until the real 

 owner of those fishes, our Uncle Samuel, bestirs himself to safe- 

 guard his own interests, instead of trusting the task to individual 

 states which will never assume responsibility for what is not their 

 own and in the nature of things cannot be theirs. 



This leaves one other division of this subject to be considered. 

 It is one that has been far too much neglected. I refer to the 

 protection of the food of food fishes. 



Some time ago there was prepared by a statesman of one of our 

 Atlantic states a bill providing legal protection for many varieties 

 of salt water fishes. It was carefully drawn, this bill, and it would 

 have restricted the taking of this fish and that, always with a view 

 to conserving the species while permitting the capture of merchant- 

 able specimens in considerable quantities. It protected the blue- 

 fish, the bonito and all the rest of the predatory varieties that 

 live upon finny bait fish, but it said not a word about the menhaden. 

 Under the law the last menhaden in the world might have been 

 legally destroyed, yet the menhaden is the fundamental food of 

 half the varieties this man was so solicitous about! And inci- 

 dentally it has been for years the most ruthlessly slaughtered 

 form of life in the ocean. 



Thirty or forty years ago the waters of the North Atlantic for 

 hundreds of miles along the American coast fairly teemed with 

 countless millions of menhaden. The peculiar milling wake of a 

 hundred vast schools of these creatures could be noted in any 

 summer day's sail upon these waters. And as the menhaden 

 swarmed, so proportionately thrived the blue fish, the bonito and 

 other large fishes of the mackerel family, which followed and fed 

 upon the illimitable supply of menhaden bait. The whole north 

 Atlantic seaboard in those days was alive with edible fishes of the 

 finest varieties, all regular boarders at the menhaden table. 



Even in those days there was a snug little industry in the 

 production of menhaden oil and fertilizer. But the catches made 

 little apparent inroad on the supply, which seemed inexhaustible. 

 Then came the formation of great companies that built big vessels 

 and employed new and gigantic devices in the capture of the 

 "bony fish," as they call them in New England. By and by the 

 menhaden began to grow scarcer. They were taken at all seasons 



