CONSERVATION OF FISHERY RESOURCES.

The movement for the conservation of our natural resources has important relation to the fishes and other inhabitants of the interior. and coastal waters. The necessity for concerted action by the States has long been appreciated, and this necessity has become more pressing with the greater drains on the supply of food and game fishes consequent on increased population. A special subject that has never received adequate consideration and should have careful attention. at the hands of the National Conservation Commission is the rights that should be accorded the inhabitants of the waters and the definite determination of the relations that should exist between the fisheries on the one hand and agriculture, forestry, mining, irrigation, and navigation on the other.

The general decline in the shad fishery, and consequently in the hatchery work, for which eggs are obtained from fish caught for market, has been arrested only in North Carolina among all the States in which the Bureau engages in shad cultivation. The immediate effect of adequate protective measures in this State shows the results that may be expected to follow similar legislation affecting the shad in the various important shad streams, such as the Potomac, Susquehanna, and Delaware, for which it seems impossible to obtain concerted legislative action from the States interested.

Reports of the salmon fishery of the Columbia River indicate a decline which is cause for serious concern, and which is the graver in portent because the States having jurisdiction fail to take action insuring the protection of the fish. The situation demands prompt and judicious action if this fishery is to be preserved, yet factional considerations in Washington and Oregon have been allowed to interfere with the passage of the needed laws and the condition is unrelieved. The Bureau is without power to act further than to continue its efforts in artificial propagation; and these are negatived by the indifference of the States. The situation presents another illustration of the necessity for Federal control of interstate waters.

In the case of the international waters of the United States and Canada, the two Governments have arisen to the necessity for uniform protective laws, and have assumed, in the United States, at least, unprecedented jurisdiction. The International Fishery Commission, appointed a year ago to investigate conditions from the standpoint of law and biology, is the outcome of an international agreement to regulate and conserve the fishery resources of the Great Lakes and the west-coast salmon waters. Its recommendations, to be submitted by January 1, 1909, will be the basis for legislation to be enforced by the respective Governments, instead of under the mixed jurisdiction of the various States and Provinces, whose contending interests have hitherto produced such inadequate and incompetent regulations.

RECOMMENDATIONS.

Among the matters affecting the welfare of the fisheries and the related work of the Government to which the Commissioner of Fisheries addresses recommendations are the following:

The extensive and rapidly growing demands of recent years have created a genuine need for new hatcheries, especially in the vast Mississippi Valley and southwestern regions, for the cultivation of commercial and game fishes adapted for ponds. It is accordingly recommended that Congress during the coming session authorize the establishment of such hatcheries.

The abolishment of the Fish Lakes in Washington has deprived the Bureau of the only facilities it possessed for conducting important experimental work in fish-culture and aquatic biology under the supervision of the executive staff. The need for this kind of work is growing and progress in certain lines has been greatly delayed. It is accordingly urged that provision be made for a composite fishcultural station in the vicinity of the capital, in Maryland or Virginia, where many practical problems awaiting settlement may be studied and elucidated.

In view of the growing need for better protection of the fish life in interstate waters, in the interests of conservation, it is considered most important that provision be made for Federal control affecting at least the migratory fishes in such waters; and it is furthermore regarded as of very great importance that protective measures adopted by the States be made more effective by an application of the principles of the Lacey Act to interstate trade in fish and other water products.

The growth of the fishery service and its special requirements in the way of laboratory and aquarium facilities, in addition to offices and storerooms, make most urgent the need of new quarters for the Bureau of Fisheries. The previous recommendations to this effect are accordingly renewed and emphasized.

ALASKAN FUR-SEAL SERVICE.

The report of the government agent in charge of the fur-seal fisheries at the Pribilof Islands, Alaska, shows that during the sealing season ended July 31, 1908, 12,500 sealskins were taken on the island of St. Paul and 2,500 on the island of St. George, or 15,000 in all. Of this catch there were shipped by the lessee company 14,964 merchantable skins.

The trapping of foxes last winter upon St. George Island resulted in the taking by the natives of 438 blue-fox skins and 8 white skins. This is an increase of 72 skins over the catch of the last preceding year. No foxes were trapped on the island of St. Paul.

The operations of the pelagic sealers still continue to affect adversely the sealing industry and to threaten the practical extinction of the seal herd. Eight vessels only were sent out as the British Columbia fleet, their cruising in Bering Sea being confined to the waters outside of the 60-mile zone from the Pribilofs. Thirty-seven Japanese sailing vessels were reported as cruising during the season in the waters adjacent to the seal islands, and two of these, which had penetrated within the 3-mile territorial limit, were discovered by the captain of the revenue-cutter Bear with their small boats down and actually engaged in seal poaching. These vessels, known as the Kinsei Maru and the Saikai Maru, together with their guns and small boats, were accordingly seized by the cutter's commander, and their masters and crews arrested. The latter were transported to Unga and given a preliminary hearing, and were subsequently transferred to Valdez for trial before the United States court. The vessels were left at Unalaska, pending action of the court.

The fleet of revenue cutters patrolling the Bering Sea for the protection of the sealing interest was increased to four for the season, and it is largely due to the activity of this fleet, in cooperation with the island guard, that the incursions of the lawless pelagic hunters upon the rookeries have been held in check.

In addition to the fleet of revenue vessels the United States gunboat Yorktown cruised in Bering Sea under orders of the Secretary of the Navy for the protection of the seal herd.

Presentation has been made in former reports of the Department that the humane provisions of the Paris Tribunal of Arbitration for the protection of the seal life, in prescribing a 60-mile zone from the Pribilof Islands within which seals should not be taken on the sea, were rendered nugatory through their restriction to vessels of Great Britain and the United States alone. The vessels of Japan, that nation not being bound by the Paris convention, are not restrained from pursuing sealing upon the ocean even up to the territorial waters

of the islands. Indeed, the immune zone becomes to them the most inviting field for hunting the seal, from the very fact that the sealing craft of certain other nationalities are forbidden to enter it.

The rookeries extend over a space of the shore line estimated at about 10 miles on St. Paul, the larger of our seal islands, and about half as great on St. George. It is obvious that the Japanese fleet of 37 schooners, carrying approximately 250 small boats, form a cordon through which the breeding females, when driven to the open sea in search of food, can penetrate only with the slaughter of many of their number. On St. Paul Island instances were noted the past season of the boats from half a dozen Japanese schooners, at a time when fog veiled their movements, advancing abreast on a rookery until within a short distance from shore, when their occupants opened a fusillade with shotguns, with the effect of alarming the seals and driving many of them into the water. The fog lifting, the boats withdrew to a safe distance from shore, and their crews proceeded to kill the seals which they had stampeded.

Long experience and the most painstaking investigations have demonstrated that pelagic sealing alone is responsible for the continuous diminution of the herd, and that no patrol, however great in numbers and active in duty; no measures of conservation, however wise and vigorous, can adequately avail for protection during the continuance of such destructive practice. The 60-mile zone of exemption prescribed by the Paris convention was long ago. found an insufficient safeguard, and since that zone has been swept aside by the intrusion of a new foe to the seal life the swift and certain extermination of this valuable animal, from the commercial standpoint, becomes a matter of near approach.

From more than 1,000,000 breeding females, estimated before pelagic sealing became of considerable extent, the number has become reduced to fewer than 50,000.

Of the five nations which possess seal rookeries of importanceRussia, Japan, Chile, Uruguay, and the United States-this country possesses by far the largest and most valuable herd. When at its maximum the yield of merchantable skins was 100,000 yearly. The number of people necessarily employed in the taking of the skins of this great herd, in handling and preparing, transporting, dressing and dyeing, in finishing and distributing to the manufacturer and finally to the retail merchant as a completed garment, was very great. From the economic standpoint it accordingly becomes a question of no small moment whether this animal shall be preserved to the world and the herd restored to its former condition.

It is evident that the time is at hand when the negotiations so long pending for an international arrangement for the settlement of the seal question should be brought to a conclusion. Pelagic sealing, without doubt, ought to be abolished, and every effort should be made to bring about that benign result.

COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY.

The important operations of this Bureau, one of the oldest scientific organizations in the government service, have been extended from time to time as the country expanded, but strictly within the sphere originally assigned it. The acquisition of territory in Florida, on the Gulf of Mexico, on the Pacific coast, in Alaska, the Hawaiian Islands, the Philippines, the West Indies, and on the Isthmus has increased the coast line under its jurisdiction more than tenfold, but so farseeing was the original plan upon which the work was based that, save for modification of details brought about by modern advances in science, no important changes have proved necessary, and the business methods followed are as simple and economical as they were three quarters of a century ago.

The extension of the work of the Survey from the shores of the thirteen original States to possessions extending from the Arctic Circle to the Tropics, and nearly halfway around the globe, together with the growing importance of commerce, the increased size and draft of vessels, and the great values involved, have greatly increased the technical and administrative difficulties of the home office, and have taxed the ingenuity of its trained officers in meeting them.

The progress made in the past year in the collection of the various classes of data required in the preparation of navigational and magnetic charts, sailing directions, and tide tables has been very satisfactory, while the marking of international boundaries, under the direction of the Superintendent as United States Boundary Commissioner, is being pushed rapidly forward. The demarcation of the one hundred and forty-first meridian, which forms the boundary between the territory of Alaska and Canada, now in progress, will furnish a line of geographic positions from Mount St. Elias to the Arctic Ocean. The Yukon, which intersects this boundary near its middle point, is one of the great rivers of the world, and provision should be made, without delay, for a triangulation down its valley from the boundary to its mouth in order to furnish a connected line of geographic positions as a base for local surveys which Congress has already authorized and which the economic development of the country already demands. Interesting details of the work of the year are given in the report of the Superintendent.

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