7i8 



The National Geographic Magazine 



Scraping 



the Eggs 

 Hatchin 



from a Live Lobster for 

 Purposes 



price for tiieir catch. The lobsters 

 are first taken to the hatchery, 

 where their eggs are gently 

 scraped from the abdominal ap- 

 pendages, and are then carried off- 

 shore and released in deep water. 

 Li this way not only are millions 

 of lobster eggs saved each year, 

 but many thousands of mature fe- 

 male lobsters are given a new lease 

 on life. 



Since the establishment of the 

 lobster hatchery on the Maine 

 coast, egg-bearing lobsters bought 

 during late summer and fall are 

 held in large enclosures, or 

 "pounds," until the following sum- 

 mer, and are then relieved of their 

 eggs shortly before the time they 

 would hatch naturally. Practically 

 the entire New England coast is 

 now patrolled by agents of the 

 Bureau in quest of seed lobsters, 

 the work being limited only by 

 the attitude of the fishermen and 

 the facilities and funds available. 



withstanding the enactment, by all the 

 states interested, of stringent laws 

 against the sale or possession of egg- 

 bearing lobsters, such laws, as every one 

 knows, have always been evaded or 

 ignored by a large proportion of the lob- 

 ster fisherman, especially in recent years, 

 when the prices of lobsters have been 

 high. It is an easy matter to strip the 

 eggs from a lobster, and the fisherman 

 who would return a lobster to the water 

 simply because it was a "berried" female 

 would be regarded by his associates as a 

 crank. Seeing how the destruction of 

 lobster eggs was going on, notwithstand- 

 ing the efforts of the local fishery author- 

 ities to prevent it, the Bureau took up the 

 matter with the states and secured a 

 modification of the laws, by which the 

 fishermen are now allowed openly to re- 

 tain seed lobsters until agents of the 

 Bureau take them off their hands, the 

 fishermen receiving the ruling market 



HATCHING METHODS 



The eggs of most of the marine 

 food fishes float at the surface, and there- 

 fore require entirely different treatment 

 from that given the heavy eggs of salmons 

 and trouts on one hand and the semi- 

 buoyant eggs of the shad and whitefish 

 on the other. The incubation of immense 

 numbers of floating eggs has been made 

 possible by the invention of a very in- 

 genious device known as the automatic 

 tidal box. Such boxes, arranged in 

 series in the compartments of a long 

 trough, consist of wooden framework 

 open at the top and covered with cheese 

 cloth at the bottom. The water is sup- 

 plied to each compartment by means of a 

 tube which discharges into a little well, 

 from which the water escapes with some 

 force through a small aperture in the 

 center of the back of each box ; this cur- 

 rent imparts a double rotary movement 

 to the mass of eggs. In the front of each 

 compartment a siphon works automat- 

 ically and permits the entire renewal of 



