INTRODUCTION 17 



deadly device ; it is merely a cloth fence strung across the river, 

 with bamboo fish traps placed in openings at intervals of 4 or 

 5 meters. No matter what the form of barricade, the luckless 

 ipon must enter the trap, since no other passage is available. 

 Were it not for occasional heavy rains in the mountains, which 

 cause floods, send floating logs and snags that knock holes in the 

 paed, or shift rock and gravel and alter channels, not a single 

 ipon could pass these barriers. 



It cannot be too strongly emphasized nor stated too often that 

 the ipon industry is doomed to perish unless a sufficient number 

 of young are allowed to go in safety to the headwaters of the 

 rivers and reach maturity. If all calves were killed after 

 a while there would be no carabaos. The only way to maintain 

 a large and steady supply of ipon is to see that a sufficient 

 number escape to keep up the breeding stock. 



Ipon move upstream very slowly and, if storms or other 

 unfavorable conditions arise, scarcely progress at all. Since 

 ipon are the young of several different kinds of gobies, and 

 their migrations spread over a long time, it would do no good 

 to establish a closed season for a month, as has been proposed. 

 The best plan is to fix a closed season of forty^eight consecutive 

 hours each week, during which time all ipon fishing should be 

 prohibited; all dams, barricades, and paed should have open 

 places for the free passage of fish, and all bobos should be taken 

 from the water during this intermission. If such a regulation 

 were strictly enforced the coast dwellers would be assured of 

 a permanent supply of ipon and the people of the interior would 

 have a much better supply of food fish in their streams than 

 they now have. 



There is opposition on the part of some coast dwellers to any 

 sort of restriction or regulation of ipon fishing. To support 

 their unreasonable attitude they have invented a fantastic 

 theory .to account for the appearance of the vast swarms of 

 minute fish. They say that a mass of foam forms in the sea and 

 swells until it is like a great bubble. Within this the ipon are 

 formed, and when it rises to the top it bursts and releases them. 

 Of course, the fishermen along the rivers know better, and many 

 of them know, from a lifetime of keen observation, the times 

 of migration for the various species of ipon gobies, and can 

 recognize at a very early stage the tiny young of the more-im- 

 portant adult forms ; but, as long as this wild tale of spontaneous 

 generation receives credence, a campaign of education must 

 be carried on among the Ilocano people until all realize the truth 



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