198 American Fisheries Society 



like to see our Government take charge of our fisheries, 

 believing that with Federal control there would be an 

 enforcement which would do equal justice to all. 



Under present conditions, a noteworthy situation 

 arises. States bordering the same body of water are 

 intimately concerned in the passage and enforcement of 

 good laws by each other. If one state fails to enforce 

 its laws and, by reason of this failure, its fishermen take 

 from this joint water more fish than would be their natu- 

 ral share, they not only wrong their own commonwealth, 

 but are perpetrating a wrong against the neighboring 

 state, which, through enforcing the law, prohibits its own 

 fishermen from getting as much as those of the other 

 state. Thus we see a premium placed upon the violation 

 of law, the guilty rewarded and the innocent punished. 

 Now, if the Federal Government controls the situation 

 and the laws are laxly enforced, the hardship does not fall 

 with greater severity upon one state than another, nor 

 would one state reap a disportionate benefit at the expense 

 of another. Under such a situation, the inefficiency of the 

 states becomes discriminatory, while inefficiency under 

 national supervision would be non-discriminatory. 



Conditions Beyond The Jurisdiction of The States to 



Control. 



One of the principal reasons making for national con- 

 trol of our fisheries is the existence of conditions which 

 one state has not the jurisdiction to control. For in- 

 stance, fishermen in Pennsylvania who get their living 

 from the waters of the Susquehanna are indignant at 

 the lack of regulations restricting Maryland fishermen to 

 seasons and conditions of fish-taking that will allow the 

 fish to ascend the river to where they live. Maryland 

 fishermen want the fisherman of Virginia restricted in 

 order that fair proportion of the fish may get to the 

 waters of the upper Chesapeake. The same complaint 

 is heard in Massachusetts regarding Connecticut, and the 

 Superintendent of Fisheries of New York attributes the 

 decrease "which has occurred in the Hudson and Dela- 

 ware rivers to the miles of nets along the Jersey shore 



