FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 71. NO. 3 



run of sockeye salmon ever recorded for the 

 Karluk. Since the total run was estimated to 

 have been about 5,600,000 (Rounsefell, 1958, 

 Table 2) in 1901 it is obvious that the manage- 

 ment program during the past 50 yr has not 

 been effective. The results of research made 

 available to us indicate that agreement has not 

 been reached on the reasons for the continued 

 decline of the Karluk sockeye salmon runs. 



Examination of published papers and unpub- 

 lished material made available to us by William 

 A. Smoker, Director of the Auke Bay Fisheries 

 Laboratory, NMFS, NOAA, by the Alaska 

 Division of Fish and Game, and by various 

 members of the staff of the Fisheries Research 

 Institute and comparison with information on 

 the sockeye salmon of the Fraser River, has led 

 us to the following conclusions: 



1. The Karluk River below the outlet of Kar- 

 luk Lake is the largest and the most productive 

 sockeye spawning ground in the Karluk system. 



2. It must be the principal spawning ground 

 of the midseason sockeye salmon that Thom])- 

 son (1950) showed had been fished down by a 

 management program which protected only the 

 early and late races. 



3. While depletion of these midseason races 

 was the first cause of the decline in the Karluk 

 sockeye salmon runs, the weir, built each year 

 since 1945 just below the outlet of the lake, 

 must have been the final cause of the decline 

 and has driven the productivity of the Karluk 

 sockeye salmon runs to the low level reached 

 in 1950. 



Removal of all weirs from the Karluk water- 

 shed is recommended as the first and most 

 necessary step toward rehabilitating the Karluk 

 sockeye salmon runs. The midseason races 

 which appear in the fishery between mid-July 

 and late August should also be protected by an 

 effective management program. In addition the 

 research program should be restricted to ob- 

 servations which do not interfere with the move- 

 ments of either adult migrants, fry, fingerlings, 

 or smolts in any way in the Karluk River, Lake, 

 or tributary streams. 



The foundation for these conclusions is de- 

 veloped in the following pages and is summar- 

 ized in Summarv and Discussion. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND 

 SOURCES OF INFORMATION 



We wish to acknowledge the assistance of 

 Dorothy D. Beall who has made available the 

 material in the Fisheries Research Institute ar- 

 chives and has checked our bibliography. We 

 also wish to thank William A. Smoker, Director, 

 Auke Bay Fisheries Laboratory, NMFS, NOAA, 

 Alaska, for age and length frequencies of Karluk 

 sockeye salmon samples from 1946 to 1969, 

 and for permission to quote manuscript reports 

 of his Laboratory. Fruitful criticisms of other 

 members of the staff of the College of Fisheries 

 are also acknowledged. Thanks are also extended 

 to the staff of the Kodiak Office, Alaska Depart- 

 ment of Fish and Game, for information con- 

 cerning the 1971 run as well as for historical 

 information on regulations and the valued criti- 

 cism of the manuscript. John F. Roos of the 

 International Pacific Salmon Fisheries Com- 

 mission, Charles E. Walker of the Canadian 

 Fisheries Service, Milo C. Bell and Robert L. 

 Burgner of the College of Fisheries, and 

 Richard Gard, formerly of the Auke Bay Fisher- 

 ies Laboratory, have all contributed valuable 

 comments on the text. We wish to acknowledge 

 especially the excellent work of Charles E. 

 Walker who made some of the most significant 

 observations of the Karluk young and adults 

 during his work with the Fisheries Research 

 Institute. 



HYPOTHESES CONCERNING 

 DECLINE 



A number of theories have been put forward 

 to explain the decline of the Karluk sockeye 

 salmon runs. Bean (1891), reporting on his 

 visit to Karluk in 1889, noted the large num- 

 bers of smolts destroyed by the fishery then 

 operating in the lower end of the Karluk River 

 and indicated that this practice would have to 

 be stopped. Accordingly, the commercial fishery 

 was excluded from the river sometime after 1889 

 although fishermen were still working in the 

 river as late as 1898 (Moser, 1899). As the 

 run continued to decline commercial fishing was 

 excluded from the Karluk Lagoon in 1918 

 (Smith, 1920) after it had demonstrated that 

 with longer beach seines than were used in the 



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