CONFERENCE OF GOVERNORS. 45 



The official statistics for this State and for Canada afford per- 

 tinent illustrations of the older and newer phases of this history. 

 ThuSj in Massachusetts in 1890, 373 fishermen, working 19,554 

 traps, caught 1,613,129 lobsters of legal size and 70,909 egg-bearing 

 females, with an average catch per pot of 83. Fifteen years later 

 it required 387 fishermen, working 13,839 traps, to produce about 

 one-quarter the number of lobsters, or 436,471, and less than one- 

 seventh the number of egg-bearing 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 increase was undoubtedly 

 due to the large number of small lobsters caught. 



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 $83,391,553. In 1897 the produce of this fishery 

 was 33,721,554 pounds, valued at $3,485,365. 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 same value, namely, 

 $3,423,937. Notwithstanding the increased cost to the consumer, 

 even in Canada the total value of the fishery has begun to fall, 

 the product for 1906 being less by half a million dollars than that 

 of 1905. 



The lobster grounds of the Atlantic coast were the finest the 

 world has ever produced, a field, according to one estimate, 7,000 

 miles in length, when measured along the curve of the shores, 

 and extending full 1,300 miles in a straight line from Delaware to 

 Labrador, with a width reaching out to 50 miles or more from the 

 coast. In Canada alone 100,000,000 lobsters have been captured 

 in a single year. 



If properly dealt with, it would seem as if this vast natural 

 preserve should have yielded lobsters in abundance and in fair 

 size for generations and even centuries to come. But instead, lean 

 and still leaner years soon followed those of plenty, first in the 

 older and more accessible regions of the fishery, until the decline, 

 which has been watched for more than three decades, has ex- 

 tended to practically every part of this vast area. 



The lobster fisheries of the old world, and especially the more 

 important industries of Norway and Great Britain, when they 

 came to be pursued with the system and energy characteristic of 

 modern conditions, have experienced a similar decline, and upon 

 the whole attempts have been made to meet it in a sin^ilar way 

 and with the same result. The treatment has been of the 



