Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/96

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It is not very difficult to understand why the fisheries so rarely receive mention in discussions of water conservation. In the general mind, fresh-water fisheries do not rank with the bases of industry so much as with the means of recreation. Some industries assert themselves by figures, but, in the way of statistics, the fresh-water fisheries have not the striking appeal of established agricultural industries: statistically speaking, we can not now compare fish with potatoes. Primarily, however, people do not think of fisheries in connection with water conservation, because it is not generally understood that the two have a connection worthy of consideration. It is worth while to inquire if there is a relation of real significance.

The value and the meaning of the fish resources to the people of the United States depends upon the contribution of an important element of food supply and the offering of a peculiar field of recreation. Perhaps, in the mind of the average man of this country, the one benefit would be regarded in equal measure with the other. This is not an inevitable or universal condition; it is an incident of the present state of the fishery. There are countries where the taking of fish for sport is almost unknown, but where the fish resources are regarded as of vital moment to the welfare of the people, and where the capture and the preservation and the distribution of fish are industries that are recognized to be of elemental importance, in similar fashion to agriculture. In many other counties fish forms much more of a staple food than with us, and a far larger proportion of the people find a livelihood in the fishery industries. Our people are not essentially different from others in their appetites and bodily needs.

The basic claim of fisheries to public recognition rests upon the part that fish must play in the future food supply of the country; but how is it to be said what this future part will be? Certainly the future is not to be measured by the present. We know that the fisheries of our principal streams are in a state of depletion except in rare localities, and we know, though we are much less conscious of this fact, that the compensatory development of commercial fishery resources in the rivers, by artificial propagation or by other well-directed means, is relatively slight. Nearly all of our thought, all of our energies, all of our expenditures, have been directed to promote the abundance of game fishes, and perhaps we might have to confess that we were thinking not so much of providing something to eat as of supplying something to catch.

A little reflection, a little common sense, will suggest to us that neither the present nor the past condition of the interior fisheries foreshadows the future. As our country becomes more thickly populated, as the capacities of the lands become more and more severely taxed, as the prices of meats mount higher, it is inevitable that we shall look