The Pound Netters' Waste
Editor Forest and Stream:
The recent action of Secretary Taft in deciding that fish pounds on certain waters should be regulated, or prohibited, should open the whole question of commercial netting along the Atlantic coast, for there can be no doubt that vast quantities of fish are being wastefully killed by the pound netters. I have just returned from a trip to Chesapeake Bay, and since April 10 I have seen the most wasteful effects of unbalanced and unrestricted fishing.
There are countless pounds in Chesapeake waters. They bring profit chiefly from the shad fishing, and other fish mere side issues, save on the western shore, where fertilizer factories use the menhaden. The point that I would emphasize is the fact that hundreds of tons of herring are killed and thrown to waste because there is no market for them. Commission merchants will pay the freight only. A few thousand are salted down by the baymen, but for the most part the fish are dipped out with the shad, and are allowed to die, which they do "in two flops." Some of the fish are taken to the wharves, and sold as fertilizer. Last week I saw 5,000 herring sold for $3.60, which a junk dealer was willing to pay. He sold a few at 10 cents a hundred, and put the rest into the ground, "to make watermelons." But only a small proportion of the herring killed are used even for fertilizer. I saw hundreds of gulls in the Honga River swooping down on the few hundred floating fish from a pound. Where the fish were thrown overboard, the bottom was covered with them. Around the steamboat wharves, the silvery bellies of the sunk herring could be seen by the square rod.
On the wharves the fishermen
It would seem that this vast waste of fish in the Chesapeake Bay should be stopped. Sundry fish commissions are busying themselves with propagating food fishes for the fishermen and for the public. The herring is a food fish, and there is no reason why tons of them should be absolutely thrown away. The baymen are incapable of looking after their own best interests, and they certainly will not look after those of the public until they are compelled to do so. It would seem that national regulation of salt-water fisheries would bring some kind of system into the present hit-and-miss fishery business, by which a kind of fish searched for by whole fleets in one locality are mere dross and useless in another not so very far away. It is perfectly certain that live business methods, fast carriers of fish and preserving facilities on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake would prove valuable to everybody, especially to those who will one day discover the curious and remarkable pleasures to be had in the bay waters.
RAYMOND S. SPEARS.