Our Heritage of the Fresh Waters 
By CHARLES HASKINS TOWNSEND 
Director of the New York Aquarium 
S INCE the beginning of time man¬ 
kind has been able to get some part 
of his food from the waters; among 
the relics of the Stone Age are shell 
hooks and stone sinkers. Ancient sculp¬ 
tures—Assyrian, Egyptian, and Aztec— 
portray the taking of fishes with spear, 
hook, and net. 
The prophet Habakkuk—who knows 
how many centuries B. C.?—placed some 
details on fishing m the earliest literature: 
“They take up all of them with the angle, 
they catch them in their net, and gather 
them in their drag.” 
In some of the far corners of the world 
amazingly primitive ways of getting fishes 
are still in use. 
In the mountain streams of New 
Guinea the still-savage native has been 
found using a dip net made of a hoop 
fitted with a piece of unbelievably tough 
spider web. 
We have seen the Aleut drag up a 
heavy halibut with a huge hook of bent 
wood, the Fuegian make a successful 
throw with his bone-pointed spear, and 
the Tonga islander stupefy hundreds of 
fishes with the juices of a poisonous plant. 
The modern Japanese fisher has not yet 
lost the ancient art of making the cor¬ 
morant fish for him without the trouble 
of providing either hook or bait. 
OUR FRESH-WATER FISH RESOURCES ARE 
CONSTANTLY DIMINISHING 
In considering the resources of our 
fresh waters, we find everywhere ex¬ 
haustive methods of fishing and a di¬ 
minishing supply, in spite of restrictive 
measures and extensive fish propagation. 
The means by which diminution is 
measured are to be found in the fishery 
statistics of the past half century. The 
annual yield of products—still very 
large—can be safely viewed only in com¬ 
parison with the continual increase and 
improvement in the apparatus of capture. 
It takes more and more gear to make 
the same catch. In the Great Lakes, our 
largest reservoirs of fresh water fish food, 
the investment in the fishery industry 
now exceeds 110,000,000. The principal 
fish-catching devices, such as pound nets, 
fyke nets, and gill nets, practically 
automatic in operation, are filling day 
and night as long as the Lakes are free 
from ice. 
The rivers and lakes of the United 
States have fishery resources that are un¬ 
equaled elsewhere. The Great Lakes are 
virtually inland seas and the navigable 
rivers are among the largest in the world. 
The mighty Mississippi, with its tribu¬ 
taries reaching in all directions, fairly 
dominates the map of the country. 
These waters, with the rivers of the 
Atlantic and Pacific coasts and many 
lakes of the Northern States, have been 
enormously productive in food for our 
people. 
TONS OF FOOD FROM GREAT LAKES 
In one year commercial fishermen alone 
have taken from the Mississippi River 
and its tributaries more than 96,000,000 
pounds of fish, while the Great Lakes 
yielded more than 113,000,000 pounds. 
Large as are the food supplies of these 
two regions at the present time, they must 
have been vastly greater before the ex¬ 
ploitation of their resources began. Un¬ 
fortunately, there are no official records 
by which the extent of the earlier fishery 
operations may be measured. 
While the fish food derived from our 
fresh waters is vast in quantity, it is also 
notable in variety. There are many kinds 
of Trouts, Salmons, Whitefishes, Stur¬ 
geons, Pikes, Basses, Sunfishes, Perches, 
Catfishes, the Shad and the Eel, as well as 
the less important, but abundant and 
widely distributed. Chubs and Suckers. 
In addition to the familiar food and 
game fishes, our waters are rich in Min¬ 
nows, Darters, Shiners, and other small 
fry of no direct economic value, but of 
vast importance as the food supply of 
larger fishes. Every great watershed has 
