Hoover on Fish

A goodly number of representatives of the Governors of coastal states from Texas to Maine will present themselves, next week, to the Secretary of Commerce. "Consider the fish," Mr. Hoover will say.

Consider the herring. Its 60-odd species give it the rank of the world's most eaten fish. It abounds in the northern Atlantic, swims in schools of hundreds of millions. Its infants are smoked, canned, sold as sardines. Its younger set, coming shoreward for the first time to spawn, are caught as whitebait. The largest, known as "herring king," is named shad. He is dark blue above, white beneath and carries as much as ten pounds of most delectable flesh. But--and this is the fact Mr. Hoover will emphasize--37,000,000 less pounds of shad were caught last year by fishermen than were caught 30 years ago. That is a decrease of 75%, with the result that, today, shad on the table is positively dear.

Consider the cod. Although his family is only second on the platter, he is perhaps the most valuable. Even his liver, when pressed under heat, exudes oil of great medicinal worth. And his tongue is a Parisian delicacy. Cod--a big creature--is partial to olive-green covering and is distinguished by a subtle beard at the tip of the lower jaw. The cod catch on the Newfoundland coast has not been seriously diminished.

Consider the salmon. He. ranks fourth--next to mackerel, a high-seas fish--and would by this time have been driven from the Atlantic Coast except for artificial propagation. For the salmon must come to life in a trough excavated by his parent in the gravelly bed of a river. Thence he makes his way to the ocean and returns, steel blue, to increase his tribe. If estuaries are foul and filled with commerce, the salmon expires.*

So also of sturgeon--Mr. Hoover will report that, in 30 years, the annual catch of sturgeon has decreased by 2,890,000 lb., or 88%. Toothless, long-snouted, mail-headed, he was once the monopoly of England's King. From his female's roe comes caviar. And his flesh bakes pleasantly.

So with the rest of the U. S. fisheries. Even the lobster take is 20,000,000 below par. Mr. Hoover announced it was undesirable for the Federal Government to take this matter in hand. He will ask the states to come to a working agreement. Primarily, there is one thing they can do about it; they can purify the coastal waters by regulating the drainage of their industrialized commonwealths.

And another thing can be done by the public and the fisheries--learn. Ignorance excludes many a worth-some sea creature from the common diet. Gunners, sea mussel, goosefish, shark, skates, rays, tilefish, sea robins, black drums--all are waiting to be introduced to the U. S. fish knife.

*It is calculated that 150,000,000 salmon eggs are annually deposited in the Scotch river Tay, of which only 100,000 live to be salmon; 70,000 of these are caught.