like Gloucester where they have always lived by the sea, as I have stated. We can't afford to do it.

Senator DUFF. You had the figures for 10 years ago. Do you have the figures for 20 years ago?

Mr. HART. Yes. I submit for the record the figures on ocean perch, mackerel, and pollock landings at Gloucester, Mass., covering the years 1939 through 1953. I also have the figures on whiting landings, both at Gloucester and for the entire State of Massachusetts. Senator DUFF. Without objection, they will be inserted in the record at this point.

(The tables covering landings for ocean perch, whiting, and mackerel at Gloucester, pollock at Gloucester, and whiting for the State of Massachusetts are as follows:)

Landings at Gloucester, Mass., for certain species, 1939-53

1 Steak Whiting have been converted to round by multiplying by 1.66.

Figures compiled by FWS, Gloucester, Mass.

Mr. HART. I think that concludes my statement.

Senator DUFF. Senator?

Senator MAGNUSON. No questions.

Senator DUFF. Thank you, sir. Dr. Procter of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

(No answer.)

Claude Ver Duin with the Great Lakes area.

STATEMENT OF CLAUDE VER DUIN, MANAGING DIRECTOR, FEDERATION OF FRESHWATER FISHERIES

Mr. VER DUIN. Mr. Chairman, Senator, my name is Claude Ver Duin, and I represent the Federation of Freshwater Fisheries from the Great Lakes area, with headquarters at 406 Howard Street, Grand Haven, Mich.

The federation is composed of commercial fishermen operating on the waters of the Great Lakes and the midwestern rivers in the States of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, and Missouri. I am happy to appear in support of Senate bill 2802 and House bill 7641 that if passed will enable the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to render some additional and urgently needed services to a rapidly declining freshwater fishery.

We have a distinct problem on the Great Lakes which I am sure has not been touched upon by any previous witness. The fisheries of the three upper Great Lakes, namely, Superior, Michigan, and Huron, are faced with the prospect of a complete collapse because of the invasion of the sea lamprey, a vicious marine predator. The sea lampreys, which have their origin along the east coast, have been found in Lake Ontario for more than 150 years. In 1931 the first specimen to be noted west of the Welland Canal was discovered in the Detroit River. During the next 4 years additional specimens were found in Lake Huron and as far west as Lake Michigan, near Milwaukee, Wis.

By 1936 the parasites had succeeded in establishing spawning runs in several Lake Huron streams, and badly scarred lake trout began to appear in the commercial catch. By 1940 the catch of lake trout in Lake Huron began to decline, and for the first time less than a million pounds of this species was produced by the Michigan fisherınen. In a period of 8 years the annual production of lake trout from Lake Huron dropped from its normal average annual figure of a million and a quarter pounds to 4,000 pounds. There have been no lake trout taken from Lake Huron since 1950.

A program designed to bring the sea lampreys under control was drawn up in 1941 by members of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Michigan Department of Conservation and representatives of the industry, but could never be carried out because of the shortage of critical materials and manpower brought on by the war. During the war years the lampreys spread from Lake Huron, through the Straits of Mackinac and into Lake Michigan. The parasites worked their way southward through Lake Michigan, wiping out the trout population as they went.

Nineteen hundred and forty-four was the last year in which the Lake Michigan fishermen produced their average number of lake trout, amounting to approximately 62 million pounds. Each succeeding

45699-54- -8

year showed marked declines in trout production until in 1952 only 3,500 pounds were produced from the entire lake. Lake Michigan, like Lake Huron, is now void of lake trout, the fish that had always been the backbone of the industry up until the advent of the sea lamprey.

Senator DUFF. They are all gone in those two lakes, are they?

Mr. VER DUIN. Yes, sir; and the lampreys are now at work in the eastern end of Lake Superior.

Senator DUFF. Did they come in from the sea?

Mr. VER DUIN. Yes, sir.

Senator DUFF. They came through Lake Erie but didn't stay there. Mr. VER DUIN. That is right. For some reason Lake Erie is not suitable habitat for the lamprey.

Senator DUFF. Have any of these new electrical devices for killing fish when they come up to spawn been installed there?

Mr. VER DUIN. They have been on Lake Superior, and the pattern of decline that has been established for both Lake Huron and Lake Michigan is not being followed in Lake Superior. Thanks to the program of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and a new interest on the part of the Canadian Government, the spawning runs are being checked and the trout fishery maintained. We believe that the work that the Government is doing there is effective.

A serious cut in the appropriation for lamprey control work on Lake Superior for the 1954-55 fiscal year may bring about a sharp curtailment of this work, and the Lake Superior trout could easily be lost to the lampreys.

Senator DUFF. What is the character of the appropriations for the current year for that work?

Mr. VER DUIN. The request was for 400,000, and the Bureau of the Budget has recommended only 180,000, which is not going to be adequate to do the job.

Senator DUFF. I think that is an unwise saving of public funds myself at that spot.

Mr. VER DUIN. I think so, too.

The disappearance of the lake trout has forced the commercial fishermen to seek new sources of income, and they have turned to the cheaper, coarser, and less desirable species to maintain their production. Chub fishing, as an example, was a seasonal operation back in 1940 when trout were abundant. In that year the total production of chubs from Lake Michigan was only 1,647,500 pounds. This has risen steadily since the decline of the trout, and in 1952 a total of 11,097,600 pounds were produced. These fish must be smoked before being offered to the public. We have now reached the point where the supply of chubs exceeds the demand, and the fishermen are again faced with a new problem, that of finding an increased market for their production.

Other species, such as sucker, sheepshead, smelt, carp, and herring are being produced in ever-increasing quantities since the fishing effort has been shifted from the once-prized trout to the cheaper varieties. The fishermen find it difficult to market these relatively unknown fish in competition with better known species imported from the interior lakes of Canada.

Incidentally, the loss of the lake trout to the lake fishermen, being the highest priced fish, now runs approximately $31⁄2 million a year,

based upon the production that we had in years prior to the advent of the lamprey, and based upon the price that they would bring on the market today.

The scientists who are working on the problems of the lake fisheries now predict that unless something can be done to harvest and utilize the rapidly increasing population of bloaters, a forage fish on which the lake trout thrived, the industry will be faced with an even greater problem. The bloaters are becoming so abundant that they foul the nets that the fishermen set for other species, thereby curtailing the catch of the more desirable fish. The scientists predict that unless some method can be found for removing the bloaters they will eventually become so thick that all of the fish in the lakes will become dwarfed in size because of a shortage of food.

The invasion of the Great Lakes by the sea lamprey has so completely upset the balance of nature that new problems are presenting themselves with each passing month. There is an immediate need for an intensified lamprey-control program; an increased research program that will enable the proper authorities to bring back the lake trout and again establish the balance of nature, once the parasites have been brought under control; and a marketing program that will enable the lake fishermen to dispose of the species that they are now producing.

We know of no better way to accomplish this than through the use of funds derived from duties on imported fishery products that, in themselves, present the industry with a very pressing problem. The fishermen I represent heartily endorse the bills that would divert a portion of the income from duties on fishery products to projects designed to help our domestic fisheries. In their behalf I urge you, as members of this committee, to report favorably on the bill now before you for consideration.

Senator DUFF. What were the fish that the lake trout primarily lived on?

Mr. VER DUIN. The bloaters, a member of the herring family.
Senator DUFF. They have no commercial value, have they?

Mr. VER DUIN. Not at the present time, and we know of no way to take them in quantities, and it is one of the reasons why we are in support of this bill, because we think that research is very badly needed to help us find a way to reduce the tremendous populations of these forage fish that are in Lake Michigan.

Senator DUFF. They have taken practically all the food from everything else, I take it.

Mr. VER DUIN. That is right, sir.

Senator DUFF. How about your whitefish?

Mr. VER DUIN. Whitefish are not too seriously affected by the lamprey because they are a shallow-water fish, and the lamprey during the time of its parasite period is principally a deep-water fish.

But the whitefish fishery is one that throughout history has been marked by extreme fluctuations. They will be abundant for a period of years, and then they will drop to a low point.

Senator DUFF. How about the cisco?

Mr. VER DUIN. The cisco, commonly referred to in Lake Erie, of course, has been gone from the commercial catch for many years. Senator DUFF. Has it disappeared in the other of the Great Lakes?

Mr. VER DUIN. We have a counterpart to the cisco on Lake Michigan in the chub, and that has increased because that fish, too, was preyed upon by the lake trout, but we have fear for the chubs because the bloaters are now competing with it for food, and we have a possibility of a dwarf population, as I said before, so we have many varied and complex problems on the lakes, and we certainly endorse this bill, believing that it would make available some funds that would help us solve our problems and reestablish the lake fisheries.

Senator MAGNUSON. You wouldn't want the passage of this bill to interfere with the special investigation that we voted for the lamprey? Mr. VER DUIN. No, sir; no, but we feel

Senator MAGNUSON. Because I remember that has been before this committee a couple of years ago because that appeared to be a real emergency.

Mr. VER DUIN. It is, but we have another problem now. We have been forced to concentrate on the cheaper, the coarse, the less desirable species of fish in order to maintain production now that the trout is gone, and we are finding it increasingly difficult to market these lesser known varieties, and we believe that there again, funds that might be made available through this would help us solve our marketing problems.

Senator DUFF. I thoroughly agree with you that the $75,000 now provided by law is utterly inadequate considering for instance, the seriousness of that lamprey problem on the Great Lakes. Mr. VER DUIN. Yes, sir, Thank you. Senator DUFF. Dr. Wilbur Chapman.

STATEMENT OF DR. WILBERT M. CHAPMAN, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, AMERICAN TUNA BOAT ASSOCIATION

Dr. CHAPMAN. My name is W. M. Chapman. I am director of research for the American Tuna Boat Association in San Diego, Calif. I am here also speaking on behalf of the Fishermen's Cooperative Association, a group of fishermen fishing by the purse seine method in San Piedro, Calif.

I want to endorse thoroughly the bill before us with the additional amendment that Senator Saltonstall has suggested of an advisory committee to aid the Fish and Wildlife Service in working out the details of the bids.

I would like to make only a few brief remarks about our special problems.

We fish for tuna. We ordinarily catch about 15 percent by value of the fish caught in the country. For the past 4 years we have been pressed very bitterly between 2 millstones; 1, rising cost of operations, and second, the importation of tuna from Japan which has kept our prices very low.

Senator DUFF. Is that discovery of tuna in large quantities in the South Pacific increasing your difficulties?

Dr. CHAPMAN. Well, the Japanese are exploiting those discoveries.' They haven't served us very much to this present date.

Our problem, since we apparently are not going to get any tariff relief from Japanese tuna, therefore, is to reduce our cost of operation so that we can stay in our own market.