46 CONFERENCE OF GOVERNORS. 



symptomatic kind, and the real cause of the difficulty has not been 

 reached. Sweden, indeed, is said to have felt the need of pro- 

 tective measures two hundred years ago, and to have framed the 

 first laws regulating her lobster fishery in 1686. In 1865 the 

 export of lobsters from Norway, to England chiefly, reached nearly 

 2,000,000 in numbers. Already as early as 1838 protective meas- 

 ures were being vigorously discussed, and it was proposed to 

 establish a gauge-limit of 8 inches; but this was rejected, and 

 a close season (July 15 to September 30, and later extended from 

 July to November) adopted instead. From 1883 to 1887 about 

 1,000,000 lobsters were captured on the Norwegian coast yearly, 

 having a value of 640,000 francs ($128,000), a large part of the 

 product being consumed in the interior, and the rest exported 

 alive.^ While this small fishery has maintained itself better than 

 most, it has probably suffered still greater reduction in recent 

 years, but at this moment the later statistics are not available. 



The yield of the lobster fisheries in the British Islands has 

 in some years reached a total of 3,000,000 lobsters, and complaints 

 of a diminishing supply have been loud and frequent. This would 

 be a little over a third more than the returns of the Massachusetts 

 fishery in 1888, with its higher gauge of 10% inches at that time. 



What means have been adopted here and in other parts to check 

 the decline of this fishery, so general and so universally acknowl- 

 edged ? The more important restrictive measures enacted at sundry 

 times and in divers places have been as follows : (1) Closed seasons, 

 of various periods in different localities. (2) The legal gauge or 

 length limit; namely: 9 inches in New York, Ehode Island and 

 Connecticut; 10% inches in Maine and New Hampshire, and in 

 Massachusetts until reduced to 9 inches in 1907; 8 inches in 

 Norway and England; and 8, 9 and 101/2 inches in diflierent dis- 

 tricts of Canada; in all cases penalizing the capture and sale of 

 all lobsters under these limits, and legalizing the destruction of 

 all adults above the gauge. (3) "Egg-lobster" laws, or the 

 prohibition of the destruction of female lobsters carrying their 

 external eggs. In addition to such legislative enactments, efforts 

 of a constructive character have been made as follows: (4) To 

 increase the supply of lobsters in the sea by fry or larvse artificially 

 hatched and immediately liberated, and, as practised chiefly in Can- 

 ada, by holding the berried lobsters in large enclosures, called lobster 

 pounds, ponds, preserves or parks, and subsequently setting them 

 free when the young are ready to hatch. (5) By the rearing 



' " Les Peoheries de la Norw^ge," Exposition Universelle de 1889 ^ Paris. Bergen, 1889. 



