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Show To Cultivate a Sense of National Responsibility Toward the Fisheries By HERBERT HOOVER, U. S. Secretary of Commerce. WE HAVE not alone the problem of food fisheries, but we have a problem that, while perhaps not so vital to food, is yet vital to the development of American life; that is the problem of game fish. The development of the automobile and good roads has enabled a far Varger portion of our people to take to the great outdoors for regeneration both of body and soul. I do not consider it an exaggeration to say that this summer will have seen two million anglers upon our streams and coast In one state alone 200,000 individual licenses have been issued this year. Every fwherman will confirm that our game fish are decreasing steadily under this pressure and with them one of the great lures to the outdoors is being destroyed. We cannot maintain our fisheries unless we allow enough of each species to escape to reproduce the school, and unless we increase and improve im-prove our methods in propagation. We cannot get them to reproduce if we pollute and poison the waters in which they must spawn. The steps before us are: To cultivate a sense of national responsibility toward the fisheries and their maintenance; to make conservation of those priceless resources a part of the national instinct; to let the whole country understand that we can no more overfish and expect to have sea food than we can outcut the growth of our forests and expect to have timber. To make a vigorous attempt to restore the sturgeon, salmon, shad, lobster, crab, oyster and clam and other littoral fisheries on the Atlantic coast. To secure the prevention of pollution from sources other than ships both in coastal and inland waters. To undertake the reinforcement of stocks of game fish throughout the United States. |