The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries Part 45

"Jus' the same," was the reply, "but for the market, an' there it's worth four or five times as much."

"When you come to think of it," said Colin, "there isn't much in the sea that isn't fit for food. Even the swordfish is good eating."

"There's some poisonous fish down in the tropics," was the reply, "but I reckon that but for a few of those, a hungry man could eat nigh anythin'

that came out o' the water, fish or sh.e.l.lfish or anythin'. An' you know," he added, "some folks, like the j.a.panese an' South Sea Islanders, prefer 'em raw."

"Doesn't sound good to me at all," the boy said with a laugh, as the little steamer turned into the 'hole.' "I'm satisfied to eat oysters and clams raw, but not much else."

The rest of the month pa.s.sed all too rapidly for Colin, who was becoming greatly attached to Woods Hole. The sense of accomplishment was strong throughout the place, every one was conscious that time was well spent, and the atmosphere of the little village was one of entire content. The boy made any number of friends, but above all, he took his greatest delight in knowing that he had really found the work that he wanted to do, and in trying as hard as he could to fit himself for it. Every day he spent in the Bureau he saw more clearly the value of the work it had done and the opportunities for other great advances. The exportation of live fish to foreign streams had a great attraction for him.

"You know, Colin," the director said to him one day, when he was speaking of the Bureau work, "all over the world there are fish which we ought to be able to acclimatize in American waters, and there are American fish which would thrive abroad. It has always been an idea of mine that we could probably prevent famines in large parts of Asia by looking after the fish supply. You hardly ever find a bad crop and a bad fish year come together, the one always makes up for the other. Just think what a gain it would have been in some of these Chinese and Indian famines if they could have had all the fish they wanted. Millions of lives could have been saved. The Bureau of Fisheries of this and other countries won't have finished its work until every river and stream of fresh water, every lake, and every square mile of the ocean is stocked with the very finest of the food fishes, and the undesirables are weeded out."

"Weeded out, like a garden?"

"Just exactly! Every hogfish and lamprey in American waters--that's a near-fish that sucks the blood of other fish, you know--should be exterminated just in the same way that the farmers of the country are making away with the Canada thistle. Against the sharks--the tigers of the sea, the killers--the wolves of the sea, and all the other predatory forms, relentless war should be waged until the wild fishes of the sea are destroyed, as the wild beasts of the forest have fled before the face of man."

"Could that ever be done?"

"It will be done," the director answered, "but not in my time nor in yours. It is a piece of work in which every step counts, and just one summer's work may bring results that will help millions of people in the years yet to come."

"And I shall have a share!" cried Colin, his enthusiasm kindling.

"Every one has a share; in the Fisheries, no work is wasted, no energy is lost. Whether it be such research as that which you have seen me doing upon the oyster drill, or the spectacular administration of the seal herds on the Pribilof Islands, or the dry statistical work of estimating the value of a fishery--on which work Dr. Crafts writes me he is going to send you--each part has its place and a big place. The aims of the Bureau are on so vast a scale that nothing is petty. We think in terms of millions and tens of millions, and Nature responds.

There are more showy ways of helping the world, but for the accomplishment of great results I know of none superior."

"You said, sir," said Colin, who had been startled by the reference to himself, "that Dr. Crafts had some other work for me?"

"Yes," was the reply. "You know that the Laboratory here only keeps open until the first of September, don't you?"

"Yes, Mr. Prelatt."

"What had you thought of doing between then and college?"

"I hadn't made any plans."

"I have a letter from the Deputy Commissioner, here," the director continued, "in which he asks me if there is any one of the young fellows whom I have had for the summer who would like to go with one of the statistical field agents, and he suggests your name, should you wish to go. It will be a short stay, not more than ten days or so, and won't interfere with your getting back to college."

"I should like to go, ever so much," said Colin, "and I think it's awfully good of Dr. Crafts to think of me."

"Very well, then," answered the director; "I'll write to him about it. I thought you would accept, unless you had made other plans."

"I don't think I know much about the statistical side of the Bureau,"

said Colin; "just what does that take up?"

"Statistics mainly, but I can explain its value best by what I know it has done," the director said thoughtfully. "One of the very best things it accomplished, I think, was an investigation into the cause of the heavy loss of life among the crews of New England fishing-vessels."

"What was the cause, sir?"

"The statistical division of the Bureau ascribed a great many of the fatalities to badly-built vessels, so that a number of them foundered at sea in bad weather."

"How could the Bureau help that?"

"It did help it wonderfully," the director answered. "A thorough investigation was set on foot and all kinds of vessels examined. The experts of the country were consulted and hundreds of models made to find out just which was the most seaworthy. The fishing-fleets of all the world were visited, and as a result a schooner was built and called the _Grampus_, which became a model for all that was most to be desired in fishing-vessels. The boat-builders of the country since then have followed that type, and the loss of life from vessels of the _Grampus_ type in the last ten years has been less than one-fourth of that from the older vessels in the ten years preceding. From the port of Gloucester alone, this has meant in the ten years a saving of over six hundred lives."

"That's getting results!" said Colin admiringly.

"And the commercial results, while they don't compare in importance with the saving of life, of course, are even bigger. The winter cod-fishery of New England was absolutely revolutionized by the introduction of gill-nets with gla.s.s-ball floats, the catch becoming three times as large, while at least one hundred thousand dollars was saved annually in the single item of bait. Scores of new fishing-grounds have been located, and apparatus has been devised which enables the fishermen to exploit grounds which they previously had been unable to reach.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TESTING THE OCEAN'S CROP.

Experimental haul on the Bureau's vessel, the _Fish Hawk_, to determine the character of the population of sh.o.r.e waters.

_Courtesy of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries._]

"There are so many different things being accomplished that it's hard to name them all, but you can see for yourself that some one has got to collect the figures on fisheries in order to determine how the industry is progressing. If a town reports a bad season, when all the other ports have been fortunate, the Bureau finds out why. If the catch of a certain fish is decreasing all over the country, then this species must be turned over to the fish culturists for artificial hatching and increase of supply, and so on in a thousand directions. The statistical end has to get the figures. We base all our work on those."

"I wonder what I shall have to do?" said Colin, with a note of query.

"That I don't know anything about," the director answered. "As director of the Biological Laboratory, I'm on the scientific division, and really can't tell you much about the cultural and statistical ends. I understand, however, that the Deputy Commissioner plans to send you to the mackerel fishery."

"From Gloucester, Mr. Prelatt?"

"No, from Boston. At least that is where you are to meet Mr. Roote.

Rather a full review of the mackerel fishery has been made, so I suppose this is some special inquiry. The regular statistics of Boston and Gloucester fish-markets are so important that local agents are appointed to make monthly reports. You have not been called on much for extra collecting recently, have you?"

"No, sir," answered Colin; "almost all the research workers have enough specimens for the work they're doing, because it's too near the end of the time to start any new details. So I haven't much to do except to look after the trap."

"We'll get a few days together on the oyster drill, then," said the director, "before you go away."

When the time came for Colin to leave Woods Hole he found himself most reluctant to go, and he rather regretted that he had accepted the mackerel fishery investigation, because he saw that he could have got permission to work on with Mr. Prelatt for a week or two. But the matter had been arranged, and when the boy arrived in Boston, he was alert with the interest of a new experience.

The statistician was a silent man. He greeted Colin with few words and eyed him critically.

"Hm! You can handle a boat?"

"Yes, sir," said Colin in surprise.

"Get aboard the _Shiner_ at seven-thirty to-morrow, at the dock next to Gray's," and he nodded his head and walked off, leaving Colin to stare after him.

"Well," the boy said aloud, "that's short enough and clear enough, only I don't happen to know where Gray's is!"

A little questioning around the waterfront, however, enabled him to find the vessel, and as the lad had been in Boston a couple of times before, the search was not long. The _Shiner_ hailed from Gloucester and was "the real thing," as Colin said under his breath. One hundred and twelve feet long she was, with an air, as she sat on the water, of knowing every little wickedness of the ocean and understanding the way to conquer it too; her mainmast cleared eighty-five feet, and was stepped well forward, with a boom that Colin did not overestimate greatly when he put it at eighty feet. Although the boy was not a keen judge, he thought the bowsprit immensely long, and noticed what a narrow nose the seiner possessed.

Early the next morning she put out. The weather was ugly, but the captain of the _Shiner_ was a Gloucester fisherman, and he went slap down Boston Harbor with every inch of canvas set alow and aloft. The seiner lay well over on her side, and Colin, while he had often sailed in small boats with the lee rail under, found it a new sensation to go tearing along at such speed. He knew nothing of his new chief, and stole a glance at him, finding the statistician smoking a pipe with entire unconcern.

Colin smiled to himself. For a moment he had forgotten, the statistician was a Bureau man, too. The _Shiner_ sped out to sea, cleaving the water at thirteen knots an hour easily, although her thirty-six-foot seine-boat was towing after her.

"She certainly can sail, Mr. Roote!" exclaimed the boy, but he only got a grunt in reply.