NATIONAL FISHERY CONGRESS. 



223 



berried female, hatching them, and liberating the young larvtn into the sea. Nature 

 does not confer any special favors upon the young lobster thus brought into the world. 

 It is not a case of making two blades of grass grow where but one would have grown 

 before. A delicate, helpless organism, one-fifth of an inch long, it must contend alone 

 with the forces of the world into which it is cast, the ocean, on the surface of which 

 it is destroyed by millions through the indiscriminate forces of nature the tempest, 

 the tide, the ocean current, and wave-beaten shore and we must add to this the 

 destruction wrought by surface- feeding animals. 



With the liberal allowance of the survival of 2 individuals out of every 10,000 

 hatched, we would have to hatch 1,000,000 eggs to produce 200 adults, 100,000,000 to 

 get 20,000, and 1,000,000,000 to obtain 200,000 adult animals. To raise 1,000,000 

 lobsters would involve the hatching of 5,000,000,000 eggs. Since hundreds of 

 thousands of adult lobsters are captured every month during the best of the season, it 

 is evident that the annual supply can not be appreciably affected by this method 

 unless conducted upon an altogether impracticable scale. 



The greatest number of lobsters artificially hatched and liberated in a single year 

 in Newfoundland, Canada, and the United States, according to the official reports 

 for 1894, was 702,288,000. 1 This number of young at the rate of survival of 1 in 

 5,000 would yield 140,457 adults, while in a single year (1892) 68,000,000 lobsters have 

 been captured in Canada alone. In order to put an equivalent number of lobsters 

 back to make good this loss, not half or three quarters of a billion should have been 

 hatched, but 340,000,000,000, or something less than 500 times as many as were actually 

 liberated. In this case man has attempted by working on a small scale to stein the 

 tide of destruction, which nature working on such a vastly greater scale has been 

 unable to do. 



The conclusion which we reach is that too much has been expected from the 

 present method of the artificial propagation of the lobster, and that it is totally 

 inadequate to accomplish the task of restocking the depleted waters. 



It may properly be asked of one who makes criticisms to suggest remedies, 

 although he is not wholly responsible for the performance of this task. The following 

 suggestions without further discussion seem to me to have a logical basis : 



(1) That the coasts of those States in which the lobster fishery is of sufficient 

 importance be divided, after careful consideration, into a number of well-marked 

 areas, and that fishing for this animal be closed in each alternate section for a period 

 of five years 5 at the end of this time the open areas to be closed, and so on alternately. 



(2) That the legal limit be fixed at 10 inches for all purposes and under all 

 conditions. 



(3) That all traps be registered and marked, and that their construction be regu- 

 lated by law so that the space between the two lower slats be sufficient to allow free 

 passage to all lobsters under 10 inches in length. 



1 The number of young lobsters hatched and liberated on the Atlantic coast since 1893 is given 

 by the official reports as follows : 



