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19 The End ofan Era The Impossible, the Incredible Happened In two locations on the Great Lakes, Georgian Bay and Lake Erie, the consequences of aggressive and competitive fishing, the changing marine habitat, and the inability of policy makers to protect the resource converged to signal the coming of the end of an era in the history of the fish population. The years when salmon, whitefish, trout, herring, and sturgeon were the mainstays of the most bountiful commercial fishing on the Great Lakes stretched from the colonial period to the late 1920s. Too many people, too many fishermen, too many changes in the marine habitat , too many technical refinements in ways of fishing, not enough public concern, and not enough knowledge about how to protect and conserve the resource spelled decline. Unmistakable trouble signs became evident in the highly productive fisheries of Georgian Bay in 1908, and the bountiful Lake Erie herring population suffered irreparable loss in 1925. The fisheries of Georgian Bay, often the subject of debate in the House of Commons from the mid-1880s, drew more and more attention. Especially in the decade after 1895, complaints escalated in a flood of letters and petitions to the House of Commons and the Department of Marine and Fisheries calling for changes in fishing regulations. Simultaneously, more and more requests for licenses poured into the department and, after 1898, the Ontario Department of Fisheries. Better times, higher prices, and strong competition between smaller fishing enterprises and larger operators like James and Charles Noble of Killarney and the Dominion Fish Company, the Canadian subsidiary of A. Booth and Company, pro321 PART IV. TOWARD LAMPREY EVE duced the groundswell of discontent. To calm criticism, the government of Sir Wilfrid Laurier opted to appoint a study commission in 1905 under the direction of Edward E. Prince to investigate the causes for complaint and to recommend remedies. Conducted in the midst of the heated controversy between the dominion and Ontario over the administration of fisheries law, this exploration of the threats to Georgian Bay, which expanded to include those to Lake Erie as well, was the last major study of the problems in regulating the fisheries of the Great Lakes conducted unilaterally by the national government.! Based on extended interviews with fishermen and dealers and on experimental fieldwork, the findings of the Georgian Bay Fisheries Commission portrayed a fishery with major problems created principally by waste and overfishing. It reported a marked decline in the whitefish harvests from a high of 2,347,000 pounds in 1875 to 1,259,000 in 1906, and the size of the marketed fish had decreased. The number of gill-net tugs had grown steadily from 6 in 1875 to 43 in 1906, and the miles of gill net fished had increased from 490 to 2,114 in the same time period. The immense slaughter had destroyed the balance of nature, "and the extinction of the whitefish will inevitably follow, ... unless effective protective measures are immediately adopted," the report stated. Production figures showed that trout, "better adapted by nature for self-protection and reproduction " than whitefish, seemed to be holding their own, but considering both the quantity of. nets and the smaller size of mesh, they also were declining and needed regulatory protection. Yellow pickerel, however , seemed to be increasing and gaining market popularity. The sturgeon had reached a "critical state," requiring a three-year harvest moratorium beginning in 1908. The herring population seemed satisfactory, but had to be protected because of its importance as food for trout and pickerel. "Coarse fish," such as sucker, carp, and mullet, were "undoubtedly" increasing in numbers, particularly in the North Channel, and should be discouraged by requiring fishermen to remove unwanted rough fish from their nets and to dispose of them on land.2 To conserve the commercial fisheries for long-term productivity, the commission proposed a new set of regulations based on the testimony gathered from fishermen, the observations of the commissioners, and the results of a number of experiments done by the staff of the Georgian Bay Biological Station at the commission's request. The recommendations included the use of larger mesh sizes to avoid taking small, immature fish; the closer regulation of the allowable yardage of gill nets per boat; and the restriction of gill- and pound netting to specified locations. They suggested that the number of licensed fishermen be reduced and that the closed season be determined according to geographic location. They called for the complete reorganization...

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