D2, REPORT OF THE FISH AND GAME COMMISSION. 
without making the investments unprofitable. There was no early 
attempt made to determine when the catch had reached the limit of 
safety. 
The point we have been leading up to is, that if a statistical study 
had early been started to show when the average catch per trap, purse 
or gill net, started to decline, depletion would have been apparent much 
earlier and the catch could have been restricted before in investment 
became so heavy and the companies would at least have been fore- 
warned. 
It is the duty of the state and of the governments interested, if they 
have the welfare of their fisheries at heart, to make every intelligent 
effort to determine at the earliest moment when any one fishery has 
reached its highest point of productivity beyond which depletion follows 
accompanied by the financial loss of those in the industry. The best 
and probably the only method by which this point may be determined is 
by a careful and accurate statistical study of the fishery. It is indis- 
pensable in such a study that a system be devised by which accurate and 
complete data of individual boat catches ean be collected annually and 
filed for future study. Although no state or country, at the present 
time, has put into execution an efficient system of this sort, 1t is possible 
to do so without any great outlay of effort or money. Without fully 
realizing it, we were very near to devising such a system in our com- 
mercial fisheries tax bill, passed at the last session of the legislature, 
when we provided that all dealers and packers must keep a copy of . 
receipts issued to fishermen. If the law had required that they make a 
third carbon copy of each receipt issued to fishermen, this third copy to 
be the property of the state, we would have had the ideal system pro- 
posed above. Under such a system more accurate and complete data of 
the catch of individual boats and of the total catch of each species could 
be obtained than is at present collected in any other state or country. 
It has been necessary for the United States Food Administration, in 
setting the price which fishermen are to receive for fish, to know what is 
the average income of fishermen in certain fisheries. The income of the 
fisherman can not very well be determined without going into the statis- 
ties of individual boat catches. Also the Food Administration could not 
very well hold fishermen or packers and dealers to their contracts, which 
it is one of their duties to do, without having a record of all the sales of 
each fishing boat; both of which would be clearly shown by collecting a 
third carbon copy, as described above, from each dealer and packer. 
As we are assisting the Food Administration in its work so far as it has 
to do with the fisheries, we proposed, with their aid, to put into execu- 
tion this triplicate system. Accordingly, books were printed with 
receipts in triplicate which have been adopted by: all the dealers and 
