THE FAIRPORT FISHERIES BIOLOGICAL STATION: ITS 

 EQUIPMENT, ORGANIZATION. AND FUNCTIONS. 



By ROBERT E. COKER, Ph. D., 



Assistant in Charge of Scientific Inquiry, Bureau of Fisheries. 

 (Formerly Director of the Station.) 



FUNCTIONS OF THE STATION. 



By means of the Fairport fisheries biological station, with personnel of investigators 

 and fish culturists, equipment of laboratories and ponds, and apparatus for scientific and 

 practical work, the Bureau is enabled to inaugurate a more positive effort for the promo- 

 tion of all fishery interests of the Mississippi Basin. This institution is located upon 

 the Mississippi River, approximately midway between St. Paul and the mouth of the 

 Ohio, 8 miles above Muscatine, Iowa, and 20 miles below Davenport, Iowa, and Rock 

 Island, 111. 



The station, with permanent and temporary employees and associates, engages 

 in the propagation of the pearly mussels; in the cultivation of fishes with experimental 

 and practical ends; in the investigation of problems relating to mussels, to fishes and to 

 fishery conditions; and in biological research. With such scope, this biological station 

 affords a nucleus for many phases of the Bureau's activities for the promotion of fishery 

 interests in interior waters. Its operations are not restricted to the station or to its 

 vicinity, but extend into the distant parts of the basin, as e\adenced by the propagation 

 of mussels in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Arkansas, and by the investigation 

 of fishery resources and biological conditions in South Dakota and Tennessee, in Minne- 

 sota and Louisiana, and elsewhere. 



In brief, the institution is a "fish-cultural experiment station," as well as a 

 center for mussel propagation and for investigations in laboratory and field. The 

 broad field and the varied responsibility do indeed require care against the dissipation 

 of energies, but all activities so far have been coordinated in such a way as to make 

 them mutually helpful and contributory to a common end. It is the function of the 

 station in the first years to lay a secure foundation upon which, as means and agents 

 become available, the service may be continually extended. 



ESTABLISHMENT OF THE STATION. 



The station was established by act of Congress in 1908; the construction was begun 

 in the late fall of 1909; with temporary equipment, the station began operations in the 

 investigation of mussel problems in June, 1910; the propagation of mussels on a practical 

 scale was entered upon in 191 2; the main laboratory building was constructed in 191 2 



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