American Fisheries Society 361 



I do not pretend to be able to award a just proportion of 

 praise or blame for any measure or practice in such a matter, 

 for I recognize that there are many doubtful factors in 

 every biological problem, but I am forced to believe that 

 both measures have been injurious to the interests of the 

 entire fishery, the first by sanctioning the destruction of the 

 best breeding stock, and the second by diverting large 

 amounts of money and energy in an unproductive channel. 

 The present gauge laws are a survival from the time when 

 the biology of the lobster was not even approximately 

 understood, and both measures seem to ignore or to neglect 

 the law of survival, the importance of which can hardly 

 be exaggerated. By the law of survival we mean the pro- 

 portion of eggs or young which must survive and produce 

 sexually mature animals in order to maintain the species at 

 an equilibrium. It should be noted that while fishing has 

 disturbed the equilibrium by reducing the number of adults, 

 it has in no way affected the law of survival, which was 

 presumably established at an earlier ago, and which for all 

 we now know to the contrary may persist until the race 

 is extinct. 



What is the rate of survival in the lobster? Since the 

 sexes in this animal are approximately equal, and since to 

 maintain the species it is necessary for each pair or for each 

 mature female to produce only two adult individuals in the 

 course of life, this rate would be expressed by the propor- 

 tion 2 : X, in which x represents the average number of 

 eggs laid by a mature female during the whole of her life. 

 While this average number cannot be determined directly. 

 inasmuch as female lobsters are destroyed at all ages, an 

 indication of it should be given by determining the average 

 number of eggs carried by lobsters of every age or size. By 

 an examination of 96,098 egg-bearing lobsters from New- 

 foundland, Allen found the average number to be 23,000, 

 which would correspond to a lobster 12 or 121/^ inches long 

 which had carried at least two broods, or 36,000 eggs in all. 

 This would place the rate of survival at not less than 2 in 



