TROUT AND SCIENCE

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 103, 3 May 1934, Page 10

TROUT AND SCIENCE

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —If it is conceded that our trout streams arc yielding less and less fish, and if it is conceded that scientific research is a long-time investment with a deferred return, can the Wellington Acclimatisation Society afford to continue its financial support to the fish research now being carried on (and possibly with much ability) in Christchurch ? It may be that some day fish research will show how streams can be managed in such a way that there will be more fish-food, and therefore more fish. But nobody knows when/ Perhaps in twenty years. At present tho only known way of increasing the fish in the streams is to breed fish and put them in the streams. The only known way to meet an increasing scarcity of trout is an increasing stocking with fry or yearlings. The Wellington Society has so far contributed £1300 to fish research for a deferred return that can only be speculated upon. The same £1300, devoted to stocking, would have produced a rapid return. The present stocking policy is meeting with clefeat. Can the society continue to weaken it financiallly by casting bread upon the waters of fish research. The writer has a great respect -for research. Nearly all of us owe our modern comforts largely to pure scientific research carried out many years ago by men who received little reward. But, faced with a diminishing fish supply that is coming to a crisis far more rapidly than science is coining to a consummation, must not the society choose now between stocking and science? It would be good to hear the case for scientific research restated, in the hope that its disciples will give, if they can, some proof: of an early result.—l am, etc., FISHERMAN.