Excerpt from 25 Years of Federal Fishery Research on the Great Lakes

Although the Service made a limnological survey of eastern Lake Erie possible by supplying the services of the research vessel Shearwater, staff members of Great Lakes did not participate actively in the scientific activities of that survey. Rather the Great Lakes staff concentrated on limnological studies directed toward an appraisal of the effects of pollution in the western end of Lake Erie and on studies of savings gear (the first investigations of this type known to have been carried out in North America). The hybrid trap net de signed to reduce the capture and handling of undersized fish which was recommended as a result of these studies has long since become a standard gear. In fact many fishermen who at first opposed the recommendations as radical and impractical later voluntarily exceeded the original specifications in providing for the release of small fish. During the course of the field Operations, staff members seized upon the cc casion to amass large amounts of biological materials and data that were later to form the basis for a number of publications. Indeed, the store has not yet been fully exhausted.

All of the several field projects carried out in the late l92o's and early l930's were similar to the Lake Erie investigations in that they were initiated to obtain information on immediately pressing problems; support from other agencies through allocation of funds, assignment of personnel, or supply of equipment made them possible or permitted operation on a far more effective scale than the relatively modest Service budget would have allowed; they provided the opportunity for the collection of biological materials and data. Brief comments on these projects are given in the following paragraphs.

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