44 American Fisheries Society 



III. Is there a tendency toward depletion? 



An obvious answer to this question is found in the con- 

 tinual extension of the territory of fishery. The shelling 

 industry has been geographically conservative, seeking 

 new locations principally because of the comparative 

 exhaustion of the localities first fished. The exhaustion 

 has not been complete, as evidenced by the fact that there 

 are few localities in which shelling has ever been under- 

 taken which are not even now the scene of some sort of 

 mussel fishery. This, in fact, is one of the most disturb- 

 ing features of the situation. If the shelters passed 

 from one region to another, abandoning one nearly ex- 

 hausted bed after another, and leaving them to recuper- 

 ate in the course of nature, we would have, practically 

 speaking, a rather effective system of conservation, viz., 

 geographic rotation of fishery or a division of the entire 

 territory of fishery into "active" and "resting" regions. 

 The fact that such a system was the result of voluntary 

 movements on the part of those engaged in shelling and 

 not the consequence of legislation, would not make the 

 system any the less effective. As a matter of fact, though, 

 such a practice does not prevail. The body of the fisher- 

 men, of course, must leave depleted areas in search of 

 richer fields ; but a remnant either of nomadic or of local 

 shellers always remains to carry the process of exhaus- 

 tion to the very last stage. Furthermore, the greater the 

 scarcity of shells the more persistently the shellers gath- 

 er and destroy the undersized shells, even those which 

 are far too small to be of any commercial use whatever. 

 The result is that many localities, many streams, are 

 threatened with a condition which is both unnecessary 

 and disastrous — the depletion of the mussel beds to a 

 point where natural recuperation becomes a practical im- 

 possibility. 



IV. What remedies may be applied? 



As in the case of all other fishery resources, the two 

 primary remedies are propagation and protection. Real- 

 izing the importance of the mussel resources, and fore- 



