NATURAL HISTORY OF AMERICAN LOBSTER. I?! 



illegal for anyone not a resident of the Commonwealth to take lobsters from Province- 

 town without a permit. The laws later enacted proved of little or no avail; by 1880 the 

 period of prosperity had long passed, and few lobsters were then taken from the Cape. 

 Only eight decrepit men were then engaged in the business, and were earning about $60 

 apiece. This great local fishery was thus rapidly exhausted by overfishing, and it has 

 never recuperated. 



The history at Cape Cod has been repeated on one and another section of the coast, 

 •from Delaware to Maine, and is already well advanced in the greatest lobster fishing 

 grounds of the world, the ocean and gulf coasts of the British Maritime Provinces of 

 •Canada, especially of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and in Newfoundland. 



Every local fishery has either passed, or is now passing, through the following 

 stages : 



1. Period of plenty: I/obsters large, abundant, cheap; traps and fishermen few. 



2. Period of rapid extension: Beginning in Canada about 1870, and much earlier 

 in the older fishing regions of New England ; greater supplies each year to meet a growing 

 demand; lobsters in fair size and of moderate price. 



3. Period of real decline, though often interpreted as one of increase: Fluctuating 

 yield, with tendency to decline, to prevent which we find a rapid extension of areas 

 fished, multiplication of fishermen and traps and fishing gear or apparatus of all kinds; 

 decrease in size of all lobsters caught, and consequently of those bearing eggs; steadily 

 increasing prices. 



4. General decrease all along the line, except in price to the consumer, and possibly 

 in that paid the fisherman. 



The official statistics for the State of Massachusetts and for Canada afford pertinent 

 illustrations of the older and newer phases of this history. Thus, in Massachusetts in 

 1890, 373 fishermen, working 19,554 traps, caught 1,612,129 lobsters of legal size and 

 70,909 egg-bearing females, with an average catch per pot of 82. Fifteen years later it 

 required 287 fishermen, using 13,829 traps, to produce about one-quarter of this number, 

 or 426,471, and less than one-seventh the number of egg-lobsters, or 9,865; while the 

 catch per trap had diminished by nearly two-thirds, and was only 31. . No substantial 

 increase followed until 1907, when the legal length was reduced to 9 inches, and this was 

 undoubtedly due to the large number of small lobsters caught. 



The total product of the lobster fisheries in the United States for 1892 was 

 23,724,525 pounds, about three-fifths of which were furnished by Maine, and valued 

 at $1,062,392. It is significant to notice that thirteen years later, in 1905, the total 

 yield, according to Dr. Smith {325), had fallen to 11,898,136 pounds, with a value of 

 $1,364,721; in other words, during this comparatively short interval, the supply was 

 practically cut in two, but the value greatly enhanced. 



The lobster fisheries of Canada, which next to those of the codfish and salmon are 

 most valuable to the Dominion, have yielded, from 1869 to 1906, inclusive, a period 

 of thirty-seven years, a grand total of $83,291,553. In 1897 the produce of this fishery 

 was 23,721,554 pounds, valued at $3,485,265. Ten years later, in 1906, the yield had 

 dropped to 10,132,000 pounds, but, though less than one-half as great, it had nearly the 



