THE PROBLEM OF MARINE FISH CULTURE. 



By C. M. Breder, Jr. 

 New York Aquarium, New York, N. Y. 



Constructive efforts put forth in any direction by an in- 

 dividual or a group are almost certain to be attacked in a more 

 or less violent manner by others, apparently as a matter of an- 

 cient custom or because of some dislocated sense as to the ap- 

 propriateness of criticism on the part of the self-appointed critics. 

 This promiscuous picking to pieces of our contemporaries' labor, 

 while sometimes simply obstructive to the work it is intended to 

 aid, nevertheless, has its place either when it is backed by the 

 knowledge of a student of the particular field concerned, or when 

 brought up by one sufficiently removed from the scene of activity 

 to gain a fair perspective of the whole. The most pleasing re- 

 sults possible from such criticism are usually discussions and 

 controversies arising therefrom. These, if carried on in the 

 proper spirit, become the stimulus necessary to arouse an in- 

 terest sufficient to goad active minds to the point of developing 

 improvements great enough to raise the results of the work from 

 mediocrity or failure to a measurable degree of success. 



The actual value of the cultivation of marine food fishes has 

 long been open to question, and in consequence has become the 

 target for both just and unjust criticism. That this condition 

 has existed for such a long period of time is largely due to the 

 great difficulty to be encountered in any attempt to measure the 

 efTectiveness of fish cultural work on marine fishes. Among the 

 prime reasons for this difficulty is the fact that many of the little 

 understood factors contributing to the production of oceanic con- 

 ditions, cause annual fluctuations of considerable size in the 

 abundance of fish life which tend to invalidate any deductions 

 based on the statistics of catches made by commercial fisher- 

 men, not to mention such other factors as have been introduced 

 by man himself. Partly, at least, for these reasons marine fish 

 culture has found it necessary to use as a basic assumption the 

 general proposition that the figures in reports showing that im- 

 mense numbers of fry have been planted, actually represent some 

 tangible result, which of necessity must follow the liberation of 



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