OF MASSACHUSETTS. 23 



(4) Advertising and more attractive methods of preserving and 

 selling sea food by the dealers still further increase the demand. 



II. Overfishing. — The immediate and direct cause of the decline is 

 overfishing. Increased demand causes a severe drain upon the shellfish 

 beds, which soon leads to over&shmg. It is not merely the hard working 

 of the beds, but the continuous unmethodical and indiscriminate fishing 

 which has caused the total extermination of once flourishing beds in cer- 

 tain localities. Under present methods a bed is worked until all its 

 natural recnperatory power is exhausted, and then it is thrust aside as 

 worthless, a barren area. Prof. Jacob Reighard, in " Methods of 

 Plankton Investigation in their Relation to Practical Problems," ^ aptly 

 sums up the situation in his opening paragraph : — 



In this country the fisherman as a rule continues to fiah in any locality 

 until fishing in that locality has become unprofitable. He then moves his 

 operations to new waters until these in turn are exhausted. He is apt to 

 look upon each new body of water as inexhaustible, and rarely has occasion 

 to ask himself whether it is possible to determine in advance the amount of 

 fish that he may annually take from the water without soon depleting it. 



In this way the sheMsh beds have become exhausted through the in- 

 difference and lack of knowledge on the part of the fishing public. In 

 colonial days the resources of the shellfisheries were apparently inex- 

 haustible. . The conviction that man could ever exhaust the resources 

 of nature took firm hold of the Puritan mind, and even in the present 

 generation many still cling to this illogical doctrine, although proof to 

 the contrary can be seen on all sides. This idea has caused great harm 

 to the shellfisheries, stimulating men to wreck certain localities by over- 

 fishing. 



III. Pollution of Harbors and Estuaries and the III Effects upon 

 Public Health through the Shellfisheries. — ■ The unscientific disposal of 

 sewage, sludge, garbage and factory waste may tend to rapidly fill up 

 the harbor channels, as well as the areas where the currents are not so 

 rapid. 



Competent authorities scout the idea that Boston harbor is at present 

 filling up to any considerable degree with sewage sludge, but the prob- 

 lem must be met in the not distant future. This sewage sludge upon 

 entering salt or brackish water precipitates much more rapidly than in 

 fresh water or upon land, and becomes relatively insoluble, hence the 

 accumulation in harbors, e.g., Boston and New Bedford harbors and 

 the estuaries of the Merrimac, Taunton and other rivers. This sludge, 

 instead of undergoing the normal rapid oxidation and nitrification, as it 

 does when exposed to the air on land, undergoes in the sea water a 

 series of changes, mainly putrefactive, which results in the production 

 of chemical substances which in solution may (1) drive away the fish 



1 Unitci States Fish Commigsion Pamphlet, 1898. 



