THE LOBSTER FISHERY. 711 



having also increased at the same time. The decrease is variously stated to have amounted to 

 from one-third to one-half within the past five years. The majority of the fishermen are, however, 

 opposed to the law limiting the fishery. One section of the law. that prohibiting the capture and 

 sale of lobsters with spawn from the 1st to the 15th of July, is especially ridiculed by the fisher- 

 men, who claim that during that period not one lobster in a thousand will be found with spawn. 



STONINGTON, CONN. Mr. Franklin Noyes writes: " Present catch per man about 50 pounds a 

 day ; twenty years ago, about 200 pounds a day." 



NOANK, CONN. Mr. J. H. Latham states : " I think more are now carried to market than ten 



I it 



years ago, but there are ten pots now where there was blif one ten years ago." Another corre- 

 spondent at the same place states that the average daily catch is now about 500 lobsters against 

 150 twenty years ago; but the gear is much better now. 



NEW LONDON, CONN. Mr. George P. Harris states that lobsters have decreased about one- 

 third. 



SOUTH NORWALK, CONN. Mr. Francis Burritt says sixty pots should catch 100 lobsters now; 

 five years ago, 200 would be taken. 



NEW HAVEN, CONN. Mr. William Fuller writes : " It would be hard to tell what was a large 

 catch twenty years ago, for they were so abundant ; but now 300 pounds a day is a good catch for 

 one man. Sometimes a string of a dozen or twenty pots will be hauled and not get half a dozen 

 marketable lobsters ; perhaps the next day there may be from fifty to one hundred." 



Mr. H. S. Merwin, of Merwin's Point, states that twenty years ago the catch was much larger 

 than now. 



NEW YORK. According to Mr. Eugene G. Blackford, of Fulton market, lobsters were once 

 abundant in New York Bay and Hell Gate, but now they are virtually extinct. The causes are 

 stated to have been both overfishing and the pollution of the waters by neighboring factories. 



NEW JERSEY. From this State there is a reported decrease in size, but lobsters are sup- 

 posed to be nearly as abundant there now as formerly. The fishery, however, is of slight impor- 

 tance. 



THE BRITISH COAST PROVINCES. Although the lobster fishery of Nova Scotia, as a regular 

 industry, is of more recent origin than that of New England, there had already been, prior to 

 1880, numerous complaints of a falling off in the supply. According to some writers the decrease 

 was so marked as to seriously threaten th interests of thf canneries, and the matter was taken in 

 hand by the Dominion commissioner of fisheries. In 1879 a law was enacted imposing a close 

 time from August of that year to April, 1880. We have received some correspondence respecting 

 the abundance of lobsters on the coast of Nova Scotia, but as it refers to only a few localities, it 

 seems best not to include it here. 



In New Brunswick and Newfoundland, the same subject has been under discussion during the 

 past two or three years, with a view of ascertaining the best means of preventing any injury to 

 this industry by overfishing, and great interest has been displayed in the matter by both legislators 

 and fishermen. 



THE DECREASE OF LOBSTERS ON THE COAST OF EUROPE. 



NORWAY; REPORT BY AXEL BOECK. In a very interesting paper on the Norwegian lobster 

 fishery and its history, by Axel Boeck, published in 1868 and 1869,* that author gives a detailed 

 account of its gradual growth from earliest times, of the early recognized decrease of supplies, 



* Om det norske Hnmmerfiske og (lets Historic of Axol Boeck; in Tidsskrift for Fiskeri, 3 die Aargangs, Kjoben- 

 havn, pp. 28-43, 1808, pp. 145-189, 1869. 



