Feb. 10, 1894.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



121 



into this matter seriously and consider the methods of repro- 

 duction of the water. 



If you destroy this industry, you take away from the State 

 of Connecticut about 81,000,000 invested. This is in every 

 one's hands. It is not in large corporations. There are some 

 300 licenses granted for the larger class of pounds. There are 

 numerous traps in all directions. Men who are owning a 

 small tract of laud procure their cash only by what few fish 

 they get. They procure the fertilizer fur their small farms 

 by taking the worthless fish from these nets. If we destroy 

 that industry, we deprive a great class of our citizens in Con- 

 necticut of all the mouey which they procure in the course of 

 the year; that is, the ready mouey. In connection with the 

 farms they are making a comfortable living, and deprive 

 them of that, they know not which way to turn. I will not 

 detain the meeting, but would be pleased to answer any 

 questions that might be asked. 



Remarks of Albert E. Cochran (N. Y.): 



Raritan Bay. 



Mr Chairman— The fish for which I will speak is weak- 

 fish, and the territory is Raritan Bay, popularly known as 

 Prince's Bay. Twenty years ago that bay swarmed with 

 weak dsn, and that of which we complainis not an occasional 

 scarcity arising from nomadic habits, but a continued an- 

 nual decrease steadily going on since 1879 to 1881, markedly 

 noticeable since 1886, until this present year, when t here ha's 

 been practically no fish, and as to small" fish, school fish, for 

 the last three years they have almost literally disappeared, 

 and such fish as were caught have been large fish close to 

 shore. In this connection I will say that a Washington 

 Market wholesale fish dealer told me within a year that he 

 notices a larger proportion now than heretofore 'of large fish; 

 and I will say that he told me a few davs ago that he is in 

 sympathy with this inquiry, and that he thinks weakfisb are. 

 becoming scarcer because he pays more for them now than 

 ever before. The other fishes to which I may allude will be 

 the anadromous salmon and shad, and I will refer to them 

 only for the reason that I assume that whatever applies to 

 them, the better known of the species that run from the sea 

 into the shallow waters of our shores, the sounds, the bays, 

 the estuaries, with reference to the nets and methods em- 

 ployed in their captnre, will apply to that other fish which 

 runs from the sea into our shore indentations for the similar 

 purpose of spawning, the weakfish. 



There is no question t hat the markets must be supplied by 

 means of nets, and nobody advocates the disuse of nets. We 

 are not here to make war upon any vested interest, and we 

 are sorry to note a feeling of irritation upon the part of the 

 net men, as though they deemed this a movement idle in 

 character and not dignified by facts. It is we who are on the 

 defensive. We want the net men to make money, but we 

 want some fish ourselves. Why should the net men have a 

 proprietary feeling in that common heritage of man, the pro- 

 duce of the sea? Why should they sneeringly remark that 

 the. hotel men wish to fill their hotels? Have not the hotel 

 men as much right to fill their hotels as the pound net men 

 have to nil their pounds? Aud, if it is deemed that fish are 

 essential to any portion of our communities, shall some other 

 portion say that fish shall be denied them? It is the extreme 

 thoroughness with which net operations are carried on that 

 produces this strife. 



Mr. Githen, at the close of the session last evening, made 

 the first admission that has ever been made upon the part of 

 the net men that there may be another side to the question, 

 that they may have gone too far in certain localities. This 

 shows how a soft answer turneth away wrath, for his icy 

 front softened under the genial breath of Mr. Roosevelt. 

 The net interest seems perfectly honest in pointing at the 

 ample supply in the markets as proof that fish are as plenty 

 as ever, and they take no account of the increase of nets as 

 a factor in producing that result, for it will be remembered 

 that it was stated yesterday that in one short section of our 

 coast there are now twenty-four pound nets where a few 

 years ago there was but one. It is Raritan Bay that shows 

 the effect, aud not the markets. I care little for prices as an 

 exhibit. We know how that is arranged. We know that a 

 certain amount of money must be received in order to handle 

 the tish, and with prices we have no contention. It is the 

 fact as to the absence of fish in Raritan Bay, continually 

 becoming more marked, until last summer its waters were 

 denuded, and yet Mr. N. B. Church in a letter recently pub- 

 lished said that the menhaden men during the past season 

 had found plenty of food fish on the Atlantic coast. It is 

 the concurrent and unsought testimony of disinterested and 

 detached observers, it is the conclusions of officially 

 appointed investigators, that certain food fishes whose habit 

 by instinct it is to come from the sea yearly to the shallow 

 waters of our shores are being gradually obliterated from 

 their accustomed shore localities by the indiscriminate and 

 extraordinary use of nets. And now the winter haunts of 

 the weakfish have been found on the Carolina coast. They 

 are taken up in a dormant state, and last February fresh 

 weakfish were sold in the retail market in Harlem for two 

 cents a pound. 



We are not alone in our alarm at what is going on. Mr, 

 Jex, a member of the Corporation of London, and a fish 

 handler on a large scale, in two letters recently published, 

 has warned us that we are killing the fish that lays the 

 golden egg, and that if our methods are continued our ex- 

 perience, will be the same as theirs. Shall the uniform testi- 

 mony of disinterested people add those officially charged 

 with the study of the subject, all tending in one direction, 

 be overthrown by the necessarily self-interested statements 

 of the gentlemen in the net business who would have us 

 believe that there is no diminution of our fish supply, because 

 they have found on occasions, as was stated by them last 

 night, pound nets packed so full of weakfish that they looked 

 like a solid red rock in the water? What one pound net will 

 do another can do, and such a statement shows the great 

 waste that is going on by reason of the thousands of pound 

 nets that are in operation. Mr. Fitzgerald, who keeps a 

 boat house and hotel at Gilford's, on Staten Island, stated 

 before a committee of the Legislature of this State during 

 the session of 1889, that having asked a menhaden captain 

 who was in his place whether he had any weakfish on board, 

 he received for an answer, "I have got 30,000 on board, taken 

 from the deep hole under Prince's Bay light." Captain Peter 

 Polworth, a well-known oyster planter in Raritan Bay, testi- 

 fied before the same committee that he had seen chunks of 

 iron in the menhaden nets, dragged from the bottonitpf the 

 Bay. Mr. Gonzalo Poey, in a letter published in Forest and 

 Stream, July 21, 1892, stated that with some friends he 

 started from Canarsie on a bluehshiug trip; wanting men- 

 haden bait, they went to the steamer John A. Moore, at 

 Fairchild's Landing, but could not get a bunker, because 

 the steamer was unloading weakfish. Twenty years ago the 

 anglers were so numerous at Prince's Bay beach that they 

 would scamper out of the wagons in their hurry lest there 

 should not be boats enough, and in the idle season of the 

 oystermen and clammers, local population, their boats were 

 rented at from S3 to $4 a day, and sometimes hired out a 

 second time. There is no more of this, The instances of 

 this devastation are many, but I will not multiply them, and 

 witnesses freely offer themselves. The following from the 

 Fishing Gazette of Sept. 21, 1893, well states this matter: 



Many places in this country which would be nearly worthless for 

 other purposes have become of great value, for no other reason than 

 that they are the favorite resorts to which the angler makes his an- 

 nual pilgrimage with the zeal and with much more delight than char- 

 acterizes the pilgrimage of the Mohammedan devotee to Mecca. 



Prof. Lyman, in ''Transactions of the American Fish Cul- 

 rturists Association," 1876-77, says: 



When we attempt to make any laws for the protection of those of 



the fishes that ssem to need protection, we are always met by an im- 

 mense amount of sworn testimony from the owners of pounds and 

 other interests in that branch of iudustry to show that those pounds 

 are not destructive and do not tend to lessen the number of fish. 



Mr. Blackford, speaking as a Commissioner of Fisheries, 

 said before the same association: 



I think that io New York if the laws were more stringent in regard 

 to our shad we should find a very much more marked increase in the 

 supply. 



And he quotes approvingly from Mr. Mowat, in regard to 

 salmon, who said: 



I think that it was the protective laws that were ontitled to the 

 greatest share of credit; that although the fish hatching and propa- 

 gating supplied to a. great degree the waste, yet the protective laws 

 were more efficacious in increasing the supply. 



These are anadromous fishes of great fertility, and it may 

 well be assumed that whatever has been found necessary for 

 their protection will be found necessary for the protection of 

 weakfish, a fish which runs from the ocean into our shallow 

 waters to spawn, as to which habit our statement is con- 

 firmed by Mr. Daniel T. Church.- 



Prof. Baird, in U. S. Reports, 1878, speaking of anadromous 

 fishes, says: 



The rapid increase in the size and number of the nets, whether 

 pounds, seines, drift or gill nets, that has manifested itself within the 

 last twenty years has doubtless had a similar effect with the dams in 

 producing a decrease. The fish are harrassed and worried by them, 

 and hindered in an equal degree from reaching their spawning ground, 

 and thus another drain on the supply is added to the many already 

 in operation. * * * The present perfection of fish- 

 ing apparatus and the skill of the fisherman is likely to prevent any 

 apparent diminution in the yearly returns of the fisheries, even though 

 the species be gradually approaching extinction. 



How well this applies to the statements of the net men as to 

 the market returns aud the statements of the hand line men 

 that they find no fish! 



By reason of the prominence of its chief editor, the Fishing 

 Gazette may be taken as a reliable authority when it states 

 in its issue of Sept. 7, 1893, that according to official statistics 

 there were in Chesapeake Bay, in 1888, 1,421 pound nets and 

 that now there are 2,000 pound nets in operation in Chesa- 

 peake Bay aud its tributaries, and that the sounds of Caro- 

 lina are lined with them. Weakfish spawn in May and June 

 and some in July, according to locality; and as this vast 

 array of stationary traps is in incessant, merciless operation, 

 with only such interruptions as natural causes compel, such 

 as storms, and as without the spawning of fish and the sub- 

 sequent run of small fish the supply of weakfish of all sizes 

 cannot be continued, this statement needs no additional 

 words to exhibit how important must be the effect upon 

 weakfish which, however difficult to locate upon the broad 

 sea, become subject, in the greatest certainty, to destruction 

 in these traps when they enter the shallow waters in obedi- 

 ence to their spawning instinct. Prof. Huxley has become 

 quite a harbor of refuge for the net interest when the adverse 

 airs of criticism bear upon them strongly; but Mr. Jex is as 

 competent an authority as these gentlemen of the net inter- 

 est, for he is engaged in the same business and has had twenty 

 or more years of experience, and he contradicts them and 

 does not agree with Prof. Huxley. Prof. Baird in the Report 

 of 1887 says: 



It is doubtless true that the fisheries in a given locality may deplete 

 the waters of the immediate region in which they are prosecuted. The 

 cod and the halibut may be fished for upon a single bank until the 

 local supply is exhausted. This depletion does not, however, neces- 

 sarily affect the aggregate numbers upon the entire coast. 



I now come to a subject upon which I touch with delicacy 

 But as the gentlemen on the other side have mentioned it I 

 may be pardoned for my allusions to it. In an interview 

 printed in the Sun on Dec. 4, 1893, Mr. Blackford states that 

 there are in Fulton Market and i ts vicinity thirty eight 

 firms engaged in fish catchiug with a capital of §1,435,000, 

 being more men and more capital employed than ever 

 before; he says that this is evidence that there is no scarcity 

 of fish in the ocean waters and depricates any interference 

 with this investment. We beg him to be assured that there 

 is no wish upon the part of any one to interfere with this 

 interest; but what we ask is co-operation over the question 

 of protecting the fish in the inshore waters. Having this 

 statement of the rapid and great increase of net operations, 

 it would seem that a change has come over the minds of 

 the net gentlemen, for Mr, D. T. Church said before the 

 National Rod and Reel Association in 1888: "I do not think 

 you need apply for restrictive legislation, as the business is 

 declining of itself. My firm has voted to sell out and this is 

 the general tendency, because it costs more to get the fish 

 than the oil will bring; and this last season there was a 

 decline of $4,000,000 in the value of the business;" and he 

 gave as a reason for the decline the fact that the curriers 

 had begun to nse cheap grease, while dried blood from the 

 slaughter houses of the West had taken the place of menha- 

 den as a fertilizer. 



It is to be remarked that co-ordinately with the great in- 

 crease of net operations is the great decrease in the local fish 

 supply of Raritan Bay. Mr. Daniel T. Church, in 1875, ac- 

 cording to U. S. Report, testified as follows, page 88, report 

 of 1877: 



The fishermen usually steam square out to sea, and for the last ten 

 years have found immense beds of them (menhaden), and apparently 

 inexhaustible amounts three to four miles off shore; and generally 

 after about the middle of May they get fat. 



But now the menhaden boats come into the shallow water, 

 and Captain Church stated before a committee of the Legis- 

 lature of this State in 1889 that Raritan Bay is their favorite 

 place. In Raritan Bay, with an average depth of 18ft. , ex- 

 cept in the narrow ship channels, the fish cannot escape, and 

 the nets do not capsize as in deep water. 



With all the destructiveness of the menhaden nets, I must 

 say that I feel that the pound nets are still more disastrous, 

 being stationary traps, at work every minute of the 24 hours, 

 from the time they are set at one period of the year until 

 they are taken up months later. In reference to the destruc- 

 tiveness, the criminal waste, of stationary machines, I 

 quote the following from a letter publicly written to Com- 

 missioner McDonald by a writer signing himself 'Alexis," 

 on the Pacific coast: "We know that salmon cannot last five 

 years at the present rate of catching them." And from the 

 Washington Herald, of Aberdeen, Wash,, I quote: '"So 

 large has been the catch of salmon for the past week that the 

 canneries only took 100 fish from each boat daily, being 

 unable to handle the full amount offered." This is neces- 

 sarily the result of the reckless methods of fishing, and is 

 paralleled by the "solid red rock of weakfish" so graphically 

 described last evening. 



An article in the New York Sun this last summer under the 

 subject of "Wasteful Pound Nets" says: 



The cruelest waste is that of good food fish which are caught when 

 there is already a glut in the market. An intelligent observer says 

 that on several occasions owners of big pounds along the coast tele- 

 graphed to New York for tug boats to come down and take out the 

 fish which crowded the p mud-. The tugs came, emptied the pounds, 

 and took the fish to market, but the wholesale dealers had no use for 

 them and they were consigned to Barren Island. One day last year 

 air-i Walter Brown, of Newark, saw several tons of weakfish taken 

 from the pouuds and brought, ashore near Point Pleasant. The cur- 

 rent price in New York would not warrant icing the fish, and when 

 they threatened to become unpleasant they were buried on the beach 

 to be subsequently dug up and sold to farmers for manure. Thern is 

 considerable money invested in pound nets along the Jersey shore, 

 but employment is given to only few persons, less than 200 in all. Six 

 men can handle a string of pounds aud the boats used in the fishing. 

 A. H. Van Brunt, who is a line fisherman, owning several boats at 

 Seabright, remarked to the writer that everybody along the coast 

 who did not have money invested in pound nets would concede that 

 these nets were a great detriment to the people. The fish going into 

 the rivers to spawn had been steadily becoming fewer aince the 



pounds had been in operation, he says, and moreover, the off-shore 

 fishing for weakfish had been seriously affected. 



And now, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, thanking you for 

 the patience with which I have been treated I close by saying 

 that it seems impossible that all the complaints, all the ex- 

 periences that are coming before us, all that which induces 

 the appointment of committees of investigation, and that 

 which moves for legislative relief, can be idle and unfounded 

 talk. 



* Note. The statement of Mr. Walling that in 1893 the!pound nets 

 between Sandy Hook and a point twelve miles north of Barnegat 

 Inlet took 7,000,0001bs. of fish, aud 10,000,0001 bs. of fish in 1893 is in 

 direct consonance with the fact that the season of 1R92 was the worst 

 known for hand line fishing in Raritan Bay up to that time, while the 

 season of 1893 was still worse aud there were almost no fish. 



The statement from Philadelphia that these gigantic net operations 

 produce much cheaper food, and that the average price of weakfish 

 last year wholesale was 2}4 cents per pound, does not seem to be 

 verified by the wholesale market quotations except for a short time 

 in July. 



As published in the Fishing Gazette the wholesale prices were as 

 follows: 



Lowest, Highest, 

 cents. cents. 



For week ending Aug. 21— Philadelphia , ggg 6 



New York 8 7 



For week ending Sept. 7— Philadelphia 8 9 



New York 5U 8 



For week ending Sept. 14— Philadelphia 7 10 



New York 6 10 



For week ending Aug. 10— Philadelphia 4}4 5 



New York 51^ 8 



For week ending Aug. 17— Philadelphia 2i2 4 



New York 4 6 



For week ending Aug. 31— Philadelphia 8 9 



New York 5 6 



The statement of Oapt. Church that •'freenshing ,, means prosperity 

 and that restriction of fishing apparatus is against public policy is 

 attractive but unsound as applied in this case That is not free which 

 is monopolized by a few; and the object and duty of the State is to 

 see that the equities prevail, and that a privilege' inherited by all in 

 common shall not become .usurped as being within the domain and 

 right of a class. 



MR. C. H. Augur, of New York, then addressed the meet- 

 ing: 



1 am connected with an industry which employs a capital 

 of two and one-half million dollars, and gives employment 

 to 2,500 people, and which is absolutely dependent for sup- 

 port upon the commercial fisheries. It is a business which 

 brings us in close and continuous contact with the fishermen 

 and fishery interests of the whole country, enabling us to 

 acquire more general information concerning the business, 

 and more particular information regarding some of its feat> 

 ures than is readily obtained through other channels. I 

 hope a very few words from me, a representative of the Net 

 Manufacturers, will not be considered out of place in this 

 discussion. 



A gentleman who is among the most active opponents of 

 the pound and purse seine fishermen has put himself on 

 record as favoring no sort of legislation short of an entire 

 sweeping away or wiping out of the whole industry, root and 

 branch. 



The net manufacturers are, of course, a branch of this 

 industry, and the fact that the unfortunate nets have their 

 origin in our factories may argue that we are the root of the 

 matter also; so that, representing root and branch, it looks 

 as though we were in for it. 



It seems to be taken for granted that anyone, whose inter- 

 ests are allied to the interests of the fishermen must of neces- 

 sity take their side in such controversies as this, Mr. Black- 

 ford's weighty arguments for the fishermen are commented 

 upon in the newspapers, and by the anglers, in a way calcu- 

 lated to lessen their importance in the estimation of the peo- 

 ple on the ground that he is largely interested in the com- 

 mercial fisheries, and I suppose that our efforts in the same 

 line will be received in the same way. 



We don't object to this charge of self-interest, but we 

 should like to have it understood where our real interest lies. 

 If it is true that the pound nets and purse seines along the 

 Atlantic coast are depleting the waters at anywhere near the 

 rate alleged by those who are responsible for this agitation, 

 it is inevitable that the whole fishing industry must in a 

 short time sweep itself out of existence, root and branch, 

 without the intervention of legislatures; and when that hap- 

 pens, our business, representing fifty years of growth and ' 

 development, with its large investment of capital in machines 

 for making netting, and its ability to support hundreds of 

 families, will be destroyed. If the. trend of things is in this 

 direction, this self-interest, which you talk about, would 

 impel us to take your side of the case, and to do all in our 

 power to secure restrictive legislation. Not only that: self- 

 interest would give us eyes to see the coming disaster a little 

 more quickly than disinterested persons see it, and we should 

 be the leaders in such a movement. To say that self-interest 

 would impel us to uphold such a wanton destruction of fish 

 as you say is going on, is equivalent to saying that the instinct 

 of self-preservation would impel a man to commit suicide. 



The i-ating accorded by the commercial agencies to the six 

 or seven net manufacturing companies indicates that this is 

 a stable, permanent industry, in the hands of men possessing 

 at least ordinary judgment and business sagacity. Give us 

 credit for these qualities, and admit that we may possibly 

 speak for the fishermen, and in behalf of our own "business, 

 for reasons entitled to respectful consideration. Let it be 

 understood that our business is absolutely dependent upon 

 the permanent productiveness of the fishing grounds. 



A great many evils are laid to the purse seines and pound 

 nets, but they are all summed up in the one allegation fre- 

 quently made in the newspapers, that they have caused a 

 steady diminution in the supply of edible fish, aud the proof 

 cited to support this assertion is the alleged fact that the 

 prices of fish are very much higher than they were ten, fif- 

 teen, or twenty years ago. If the prices are higher it does 

 not follow that the seines aud pounds are responsible for it, 

 but if it can be shown that there has been no such advance 

 in prices, it seems to me that the proof of the assertion is 

 wanting, and that the whole argument has nothing left to 

 stand on. 



That there are periods of alternate abundance and scarcity 

 of all kinds of fish we all know; that the prices of fish in this 

 market vary greatly is, of course, a fact; but is it true that 

 the average prices the season through are higher now than 

 they used to be? In order to get at the truth we ask our 

 customers, some of these old fishermen who have been in the 

 business for twenty or thirty years, about it, and they show 

 us conclusively from their records that they don't get any 

 more for fish now than they did ten or twenty years ago. We 

 ask the wholesale fish dealers about it, aud their testimony 

 corroborates that of the fishermen; and this evidence accords 

 also with what we are able to remember from our long ex- 

 perience and intimate connection with the fisheries. 



A prominent gentleman is reported to have said recently 

 in a newspaper interview that he was on the side of the 

 anglers in this matter, and he repeated the assertion referred 

 to — that there is a growing scarcity of fish as evidenced by a 

 great increase in prices, and as an illustration he said that he 

 paid twelve cents a pound a few days before for codfish. Of 

 course he told the truth. I'll bet that the fish dealer he 

 bought it of would have charged him twelve cents if the first 

 cost of the fish had been two cents. Your accommodating re- 

 tail fish dealer will send a horse and wagon and a boy ten 

 blocks to deliver a dozen Blue Points on the half shell, and 

 he will make the round trip over again immediately if you 

 give him an order for a codfish. About 50 per cent, of his 

 Gharge is for waiting on you, but it goes in the bill as fish. I 

 have myself paid twelve cents a pound for bluefish when I 

 knew positively that they were selling at Fulton wholsale 



