No. 4.] THE HARVEST OF THE SEA. 129 



includins: the menhaden, are driven away ; in a word, that 

 the ncNV and improved methods are especially harmful to 

 the food-fish industry. 



But what is the evidence ? Menhaden are without doubt 

 food for the predaceous fish of the sea, such as sharks, devil- 

 fish, black-fish, whales, porpoises and blue-fish. It is also 

 undoubtedly true that the blue-fish eat menhaden to some 

 extent ; but, on the other hand, to what extent, may I ask, 

 do men eat blue-fish ? They are the game fish of the sea, 

 and most of them are taken by line fishermen and sports- 

 men ; but they no more constitute the food of the human 

 race than does the wild ijame of our forests. Besides, the 

 blue-fish are far more destructive of other fish than they are 

 valuable as food. Touching this point, Professor Goode 

 says : — 



"The blue-fish are the most destructive enemies of the men- 

 haden. These corsairs of the sea, as they are sometimes called, 

 not content with what they eat, whicli is itself an enormous quan- 

 tity, go through tlie schools, cutting and tearing the living fish as 

 they go, and leaving in tlieir wake the mangled fragments. Traces 

 of their carnage remain for weeks in the great slicks of oil so com- 

 monly seen on smooth water in summer." 



Professor Baird, in his well-known and often-quoted 

 estimate of food fish annually consumed or destroyed by 

 the blue-fish, states that probably ten billions of fish, or 

 25,000,000 pounds daily, are consumed or destroyed on 

 the Atlantic coast. 



" Such calculations," says Professor Goode, " are only approxi- 

 mations. . . . But, applying similar methods of calculation to the 

 menhaden, I estimate the total number destroyed annually on our 

 coast by predaceous animals at a million million of millions, in 

 comparison with which the quantity taken by man yearly sinks 

 into insignificance." 



o 



Capt. Daniel Church, who has been a fisherman all his 

 life, and probably the greatest fisherman in the country, at 

 a hearing in Washington last spring, when asked if the 

 menhaden were not the food of the blue-fish, replied that 

 blue-fish did not feed upon menhaden to any extent, and 



