FISH-CULTURAL PRACTICES IN THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 737 



have taken. Coming as it does during the winter months, from early December 

 to March on the Massachusetts coast and extending through March and April on 

 the Maine coast, the spawning season is a trying one for the spawntakers, who 

 must share many of the dangers and hardships of the fishermen. 



At the Woods Hole station advantage has been taken of the presence of a 

 large salt-water reservoir under the hatchery to test the Norwegian method of 

 obtaining eggs. By this process adult fish are penned and allowed to spawn 

 naturally. The eggs float to the outlet, where they are caught in a receptacle 

 placed for the purpose, and thence are transferred to the hatching boxes. It 

 has been demonstrated that a larger percentage of fertilized eggs per fish can be 

 obtained thus than by the former method of stripping penned fish. The increase 

 is not due to a higher percentage in fertilization, but to the fact that in the case 

 of the penned fish there is an almost unavoidable loss of eggs extruded in the 

 crates. Both of these methods are an improvement over nature, in that the eggs 

 are protected from the time of extrusion until they have hatched and the surviving 

 parent fish are returned to the ocean. This is fish culture in the usual sense and 

 not purely conservation of an otherwise waste product, as is the collection of 

 eggs from market fish. 



Prior to the spawning season for cod, or from the middle of October to the 

 latter part of December, spawntakers are distributed among the pollock fisher- 

 men, and from the eggs thus collected many millions of pollock fry are hatched 

 and distributed annually. 



The cultivation of flatfish is conducted on a more extensive scale than any 

 other marine fish-culture work. The adult fish are taken from the fvke nets in 

 which captured, usually the Bureau's own, directly to the hatcheries, where they 

 are placed in tanks and held until they have spawned, the eggs being removed 

 daily from the tanks to the hatching apparatus. It is possible to spawn flatfish 

 artificially, and eggs are sometimes obtained in that way. 



LOBSTERS. 



Lobster culture also, as conducted by the Bureau, effects a saving of an other- 

 wise lost resource, berried lobsters purchased from the fishermen furnishing eggs 

 for the hatchery and being later returned to the ocean. At the Boothbay Har- 

 bor, Me., station the parent lobsters are held until the eggs are ripe in a pound 

 similar to those used by the lobster men ; and as it has been found that eggs taken 

 late in the fall or early winter do not hatch successfully, one such pound is utilized 

 to hold some 10,000 or 12,000 lobsters throughout the winter. The losses of 

 lobsters during the period of confinement are only normal, and the quantity and 

 quality of the eggs are superior to those obtained from freshly caught stock. 

 It is noticeable also that the eggs of the impounded stock hatch almost simul- 

 taneously and somewhat earlier than those from freshly caught lobsters, imdoubt- 



