GOVERNMENT SPAWN-TAKERS AMONG THE GLOUCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS, COD 



FISHERMEN 



A very trying life, full of danger and exposure. At the Gloucester hatchery many 

 hundred million eggs of cod and other valuable commercial food fishes are taken every year 

 from fish that have been caught for market and whose eggs would be entirely lost except for 

 the operations of the Bureau of Fisheries. 



canvass of the industry, more than one 

 billion fish were caught and converted 

 into over six and a half million gallons of 

 oil and nearly ninety thousand tons of 

 fertilizer, valued at three and a half mil- 

 lion dollars. These fish, if placed end to 

 end, would have extended in an unbroken 

 line six times around the earth at the 

 Equator, and their weight exceeded that 

 of all the inhabitants of Greater Xew 

 York. 



OUR UNSURPASSED SHEIX-EISHES 



There is no stretch of coast along the 

 many thousand miles of shoreline of our 

 mainland and islands, from Passama- 

 quoddy Bay to the Rio Grande and from 

 the Mexican boundary to the Gulf of 

 Georgia, including all bays, sounds, and 

 estuaries, that does not support some 

 form of valuable crustacean or mollusk. 



Among the most prominent are the lob- 

 ster of the North Atlantic coast, the spiny 

 lobsters of Florida and California, the 

 small blue crab of the Middle and South 

 Atlantic and Gulf waters, the great crabs 

 of the Pacific States and the shrimp and 

 prawn of the Gulf of Mexico and Cali- 

 fornia. 



By far the most valuable of these is the 

 lobster, which supports a fishery from 

 Maine to Delaware and is the principal 

 means of livelihood in many Xew Eng- 

 land communities. For many years the 

 fishery has presented the striking anomaly 

 of an annually declining output and an 

 annually increasing income to the fisher- 

 man. In the past quarter of a century 

 the catch has decreased over 60 per cent, 

 while the receipts of the fishermen have 

 increased 200 per cent. The lobster, 

 which because of its nutritious character 



