AMERICA'S SURPASSING FISHERIES 



559 



PLANTING THS WATERS 



To compensate for the vast quantities 

 of food fish taken annually from the 

 coastal and interior waters of the coun- 

 try, the Federal Government conducts 

 very extensive operations in artificial 

 propagation, cooperating - with the various 

 States which are engaged in similar work 

 or acting alone in the many States which 

 have no hatcheries of their own. The 

 States which maintain fish hatcheries 

 number about twenty. 



The year ending on June 30, 19 16, was 

 the most successful in the history of gov- 

 ernment fish culture in America. About 

 five billion food and game fishes were 

 brought into being under Federal aus- 

 pices and distributed where they would 

 do the most good. So comprehensive 

 and well organized has this work become 

 that the egg-collecting and hatching op- 

 erations were conducted in 32 States and 

 Alaska, and the output reached the waters 

 of every State and Alaska. 



The major fish-cultural efforts are di- 

 rected to the cod, haddock, pollock, 

 flounder, and lobster of the New Eng- 

 land coast ; to the salmon, shad, striped 

 bass, white perch, and yellow perch of 

 the streams of the Atlantic seaboard ; to 

 the whitefish, trout, and pike perch of 

 the Great Lakes; to the salmons of the 

 Pacific streams, and to the numerous 

 trouts, basses, and other food and game 

 species of the interior waters. 



Distributions in public waters are made 

 on the initiative of the government or on 

 the recommendation of the State authori- 

 ties ; but the fishes adapted for ponds, 

 smaller lakes, and minor -streams are for 

 the most part consigned on individual ap- 

 plications and are supplied without cost. 



In moving the hatchery output to the 

 points of deposit, specially constructed 

 railway cars, with expert crews, are re- 

 quired, and in 191 5 about 640,000 miles 

 of railway travel by cars and detached 

 messengers was needed for the distribu- 

 tion. 



The fish-cultural work is so popular 

 throughout the country, and the demand 

 for fish for stocking public and private 

 waters is so great, that new hatcheries 

 are established by Congress from time to 



time, and a bill recently reported favor- 

 ably to the House of Representatives pro- 

 vides for eighteen additional hatcheries 

 to enable the Bureau of Fisheries to in- 

 crease its operations in old fields and to 

 extend its activities into new territory. 



rescue; of fishes from overflowed 



LANDS 



An important adjunct and outgrowth 

 of the hatchery operations is the rescue 

 of fishes from the flooded lands in the 

 valleys of the Mississippi and some of 

 its tributaries. When these rivers over- 

 flow their banks and extend into the ad- 

 jacent cultivated and waste places, as 

 they do every year, they carry with them 

 all kinds of food fishes. When the floods 

 begin to recede, many of the older fishes 

 find their way back to the streams ; but 

 enormous numbers of mature and young 

 fish are left in sloughs, pools, or ponds, 

 which gradually become dry, and the 

 death of all the contained fishes follows 

 as a matter of course; or, if the floods 

 come late in the season and the stranded 

 fishes do not perish from evaporation and 

 seepage of the water, the same result 

 ensues when the shallow pools become 

 covered with ice. 



This inviting and important field is en- 

 tered by the Bureau of Fisheries with 

 numerous crews of fishermen equipped 

 with seines for catching the fish and with 

 receptacles for holding them until they 

 are returned to the parent streams or 

 supplied to applicants in the contiguous 

 territory. The rescue operations are con- 

 ducted from Minnesota to Mississippi, 

 and the food and game fishes saved every 

 year run far into the millions. 



HOW science aids the fishing 



INDUSTRY 



The general public is often restive and 

 sometimes captious when any Federal 

 bureau engages in scientific work to 

 which there is no direct and obvious prac- 

 tical application or from which immediate 

 economic results do not inevitably come. 

 This attitude is reflected upon and re- 

 sponded to by members of Congress, so 

 that it is usually difficult to secure finan- 

 cial support for the inauguration of sci- 

 entific investigations or for their contin- 



