Rescue Little Fishes for Food of Future.
A regular life-saving service for fish is the latest conservation kink. In Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois the State fish commission, with the coöperation of the United States government, operate fish-saving expeditions for the benefit of the land-locked fish left in small ponds along the course of the Mississippi River.
In the springtime the river rises and spreads out over the country, filling numerous small channels and hollows. In August the water begins to recede. The large fish note the warning and escape, but the little fish remain until the dried-up channel has cut off their means of escape. Ultimately these small ponds and channels dry up completely and billions of fish have been lost annually in this way.
The fish-saving service consists of parties of men who wade out into these inland ponds, take up the fish in nets, and restore them to the main body of the river. The fish rescued are about finger length, and from twenty to forty large tubs of them have been taken in a single day from a pond not more than half an acre in area. Billions of black bass, perch, sunfish, and other edible species are in this way added to the nation’s food resources.