69 



with the yields of agriculture on land, because rr.an has nothing v/hat- 

 ever to do with its production or .-naintenance, but merely takes a 

 part of the wild crop that the pastures of the sea nourish. It is 

 true that numbers (that seen enormous by any absolute standard) of sea 

 fishes have been artificially propogated, and returned to the sea 

 every year, but it is doubtful if these efforts have had any appreci- 

 able effect on the stock of any important commercial marine species; 

 this is recurred to below (page''/f), and while shellfish are cultivated 

 to some extent, this industry is in its infancy. The sea fisheries 

 are thus more nearly on a par with forestry than with agriculture; and 

 the methods of management, to be successful, must conform more nearly 

 to the procedure followed in a forest where natural reproduction is 

 depended upon to maintain the supply, then to the managem^ent of any 

 cultivated crop. 



We see a measure of the productivity of the sea-pastures in the 

 fact that while no wild crop on land, plant or animal, can long with- 

 stand intensive harvesting, unless replaced by human effort, we still 

 fish for cod on the Grand Banks as successfully as did the fishermen 

 who first ventured to the shores of Newfoundland. 



Vast, however, though the supply of fish and shellfish be, 

 fishermen have long appreciated that the stock of fishes in the sea is 

 not inexhaustible; the rapid disappearance of whales almost to the 

 point of extinction, when they are hard hunted, is a warning. And 

 greatly though the extent of the oceans exceeds that of the lands, all 

 the great fisheries (except for whales) are confined to the shelves 

 and to the slopes of the continents, in comparatively shoal water. On 

 the American side of the North A.tlantic, for exa.mple, the outermost of 

 the productive fishing grounds lie only about 250 miles out from the 

 land (off the shores of Newfoundland). And the grounds or banks on 

 which the important commercial species are plentiful enough to 

 support profitable fisheries occupy only a frection of the are? be- 

 tween the coastline and the continental slope that marks their off- 

 shore boundary. In the deeps outside the latter no great fishery has 

 ever been developed, nor is there any hope of such. 



The case is similar on the opposite side of the North Atlantic. 

 In fact, the whole basin of the North Atlantic outside the 1000-meter 

 contour is barren from, the fisheries standpoint. Nor is this barren- 

 ness due to distance from, land or to the difficulty of fishing at 

 great depth, but to the fact that, in spite of the long list of fish- 

 species that people the open oceans at all depths, these are few in 

 individuals com.pared to the population of the in-shore grounds, while 

 most of the oceanic species are s.mall. Consequently, there is no 

 reason to hope that any deep-sea fish will ever support an important 

 fishery, or that great fisheries will ever be developed in the North 

 Atlantic much farther out from the land than at present. 



In the South Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans a still smaller 

 part of the total area offers commercial fishing possibilities than in 

 the North Atlantic. In short, only a small fraction of the total area 

 of the sea supports practically all the fish species (and individuals) 



