1912 AND FISHERIES COMMISSION. 9 



ing. The result of an all days's trip with one of the fish tugs is often 

 not more than 300 pounds of fish, which is not enough to pay operating 

 expenses. A half ton is considered an average catch on a single trip. 

 That Lake Superior, known as the abode of the finest whitefish in the 

 world, is fast becoming a Ashless sea is a startling statement, but that is 

 what the fishermen assert. Fishermen have been doing less business 

 each year for some time. Tugs have been going farther and farther out 

 each succeeding season, and now nets are set as much as five hours run 

 from shore, but even in these unfrequented waters there are few fish." 



Various reasons have been advanced from time to time to account 

 for this decrease, some maintaining that the increased shipping on the 

 waters was largely responsible ; and others that it was due mainly to the 

 pollution of spawning beds and feeding grounds owing to the sewage 

 poured into the lakes at various points and other deleterious matter car- 

 ried into them by streams and rivers boasting mills and manufactories 

 on their banks. Doubtless each of these causes has played its part, but 

 all the experts seem now to be agreed that without question the main 

 and outstanding reason has been and is over-fishing. With this view 

 your Commissioner is in entire accord. 



In other departments of supply, such as domestic animals or plaints, 

 measures can be taken to increase the production of any particular 

 species. Fresh land can be devoted to the purpose, new blood be intro- 

 duced, or quicker breeding varieties imported or grafted. But, in deal- 

 ing with fisheries, these channels of grappling adequately with the prob- 

 lem are closed for the reason that scientific knowledge of the life and 

 domain of the fishes is exceedingly limited, chiefly owing to the obvious 

 but greater difficulties that have been experienced in closely studying 

 submarine conditions, so that for practical purposes only those areas 

 already inhabited by any particular commercial fish are available for its 

 exploitation, and the effects of the importation of new blood or new 

 varieties are as yet so little understood as to be fraught with too much 

 danger to make it advisable to undertake the experiment. Consequently 

 to rehabilitate inland commercial fisheries exhausted through over-fish- 

 ing there would appear to remain but two possible methods, namely, (a) 

 by restrictive legislation, embracing alike the areas to be fished, the sea- 

 sons of fishing, size limits, methods of capture, and, finally, the disposal 

 of the fish when caught; (h) by artificial production, which in the sense 

 here used implies the collection of spawn in vast quantities from parent 

 fisli on their natural spawning beds, its admixture, artificial incubation 

 and hatching of the spawn, and, finally, the placing of the enormous 

 quantities of fry or fingerlings thus obtained in the waters to be re- 

 stocked. 



The depletion of the fisheries of the Great Lakes has not been so 

 sudden an occurrence as to have escaped the notice of experts and others 

 interested in them on both sides of the boundary. Indeed the reverse 

 has been the case, and as a result of the control of these fisheries being 



