22 American Fisheries Society 



struction of the shad by permitting the use of haul seines 

 on the spawning grounds. These seines not only catch 

 the ripe fish which are about to spawn, but what is far 

 more serious, they haul ashore vast quantities of eggs, 

 which have been deposited on the bottoms by the spawn- 

 ing fish. The injury done by a single sweep of one of 

 these seines, at times, is indeed alarming. Fishing on 

 these spawning grounds should be confined to drift nets 

 and in some localities small stake nets might be per- 

 mitted. 



All attempts to secure legislation in Virginia regulat- 

 ing and restricting the use of pound nets has been op- 

 posed by the fishermen with the argument that such re- 

 striction would merely permit the fish to go into Mary- 

 and waters to be there caught by the haul seines on the 

 spawning grounds. 



I understand that the efforts to prohibit the use of 

 haul seines on the spawning grounds in Maryland waters 

 have been opposed with the argument that such legisla- 

 tion would benefit only the Virginia fishermen as prac- 

 tically all of the fish hatched in the Maryland waters 

 would be caught on their return to the bay by the Vir- 

 ginia Fishermen before they ever reached Maryland 

 waters. It seems that the fishermen of both states real- 

 ized the harm they were doing and justified their acts on 

 the ground that as the fish were being destroyed they 

 might as well get what they could while they were going. 



It is evident that what it needed is for both Maryland 

 and Virginia to pass laws regulating the setting of pound 

 nets so as to provide broad and continuous passages from 

 the deep water of the bay to and up the rivers to the 

 spawning grounds, and to prohibit the use of haul seines 

 on the spawning grounds. Virginia has passed such a 

 law which will be in operation next season. In order to 

 secure its passage, however, it was necessary to assure 

 the legislature that Maryland officials had promised to 

 use every effort to have such a law enacted at the next 

 session of their legislature. 



