114 American Fisheries Society 



to bring a million dollars to Southern California every 

 year. The only persons it interfered with were those di- 

 rectly aimed at — the market fishermen of Los Angeles, 

 who had hundreds of square miles of coast on which to 

 haul their nets, but who insisted upon despoiling the shore 

 line of this island which was known and demonstrated 

 to be the source of supply of their own business. This 

 bill was carried through both houses of the legislature 

 despite the protests of 3,000 market fishermen and their 

 friends of San Pedro, and other coast towns, and became 

 a law in August, 1913, the result of twenty-five years of 

 almost constant endeavor. 



To those who had been working in this field of conser- 

 vation, it was a moment of keen gratification, and did I 

 have the time it would give me pleasure to mention the 

 names of the scores of distinguished men in America 

 who aided in this most important fight, among whom I 

 may mention Dr. Henry van Dyke, Dr. David Starr Jor- 

 dan, Mr. J. B. Burnham, president of the American Prop- 

 agation Society, Col. Theodore Roosevelt, Dr. George F. 

 Kunz, of Tiffany & Company, and many more through- 

 out the East. This was in 1913. In the summer of 1914, 

 for the first time in fifteen years, large numbers of tuna 

 were seen, and even in the fall of 1913, only a few months 

 after the passage of this law, more yellow-fin tunas were 

 seen in close proximity to the island than had been seen 

 within the past decade. I took the pains to interview 

 twenty-five or thirty of the professional boatmen at Ava- 

 lon, Santa Catalina Island, men who had constantly fished 

 the island from ten to thirty years, and it was their unan- 

 imous opinion that so many large fishes had not been seen 

 on the spawing beds of Santa Catalina Island since the 

 old days of 1890. In fact, a seeming miracle had been 

 performed even in one season, and at the end of the sea- 

 son of 1914, it is the belief of all those who are most 

 familiar with the situation, that if this spawning ground 

 could be relieved from the incessant netting of the past 

 twenty-five years, for at least five years, it could be re- 

 stored to its normal condition. 



