Ways and Means of Measuring the Dangers of Pollution to Fisheries

Shelford, Victor Ernest

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/45985 Copy

Description

Title

Ways and Means of Measuring the Dangers of Pollution to Fisheries

Author(s)

Shelford, Victor Ernest

Issue Date

1918-09

Keyword(s)

• Water pollution
• Toxicology
• Fisheries

Abstract

"We are at war with a powerful and well-organized nation which has planned and saved with war in view. In our belated endeavor to conserve existing resources and to develop new and latent ones new problems are constantly arising. Some of these concerns fisheries and the pollution of waters. The U.S. Fish Commission is urging the public to eat fish - to make every day a fish day. This was no doubt done in the early days of our republic, for in a great strike of apprentices one of their chief demands was that they be not fed on salmon more than three times a week. The richness of the fish supply of our eastern states in their early colonial days and for a considerable time thereafter is said to have exceeded our wildest imagination. Meehan ('17) quotes an early writer who said of the shad in the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers ; ""They came in such vast multitudes that the still waters seemed filled with eddies, while the shallows were beaten into foam by them in their struggles to reach the spawning grounds."" They swarmed every spring from mouth to headwaters of every river from Maine to Florida. Shad was undoubtedly the most important food fish in the early days of our nation; they were eaten fresh, and smoked and salted for winter use. During the spring runs people traveled long distances to shoal waters to obtain their winter's supply."

Publisher

Champaign : Illinois Natural History Survey

Series/Report Name or Number

Illinois Natural History Survey Bulletin; v. 013, no. 02

ISSN

0073-4918

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/45985

Copyright and License Information

This document is a product of the Illinois Natural History Survey, and has been selected and made available by the Illinois Natural History Survey and the University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It is intended solely for noncommercial research and educational use, and proper attribution is requested.

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