BRISTOL BAY AND ALASKA PENINSULA SALMON STATISTICS 45 



used. Similar data bearing on the yield have been compiled and published in various 

 publications of the Bureau of Fisheries, but the only segregation has been as to 

 species and into three general districts — southeastern, central, and western Alaska. 

 Although this arrangement has some value and is of long standing, having been 

 originated when the collection of data pertaining to the Alaska fisheries was con- 

 ducted by the Treasury Department, it masks the details of the fluctuations quite 

 effectually, so that critical analysis is impossible. It has been necessary, therefore, 

 to go to the original records for most of the data presented in this report, and this 

 has been an arduous and time-consuming task. Certain data have been secured 

 from published reports; those for the years ])revious to 1904 were taken mainly from 

 the various reports of special agents of the Treasury Department and various others 

 from the annual reports on the Alaska fisheries and fur industries published by the 

 Bureau of Fisheries. It has not seemed desirable, in such a report as this, to give 

 citations of the sources of data in any but certain special cases. Data of the sort 

 presented in this report are subject to some inexactness, of course, but it is felt that 

 they are as accurate as such data can well be and certainly are as accurate as is 

 necessary for any practical purposes to which they may be put. 



In the treatment of these data we have attempted to segregate them into the 

 smallest possible geographical units. The ideal thing to have would be separate 

 data for each stream, but this has been possible only in a few cases. As a rule, it 

 has been necessary to combine the data for several streams or for an entire bay, inlet, 

 channel, or larger geographical district. It has happened frequently that some 

 companies gave detailed information as to the localities where the fish were captured, 

 while others, operating in the same district, would assign the fish only to a general 

 region; as, for instance, Prince William Sound, Bristol Bay, or southeastern Alaska. 

 In such cases we have attempted first to complete the records for at least the larger 

 items by correspondence with the companies that submitted the incomplete records. 

 With the fullest available data at hand, it has then been necessary to decide whether 

 to retain the smaller units (and if so, which ones) or to give the data for the larger 

 unit only. Our procedure in such cases has not been uniform, as it was felt that 

 each case presented a separate problem that must be decided on its own merits. In 

 some instances the miapportioned fish formed so small a percentage of the whole 

 that they could not possibly affect the general results, in which case they were merely 

 included m the total for the district. For example, 194,045 red salmon and a few 

 kings and chums were taken in Bristol Bay in 1922 and were unapportioned between 

 the four districts. These are included in the table giving the totals for Bristol 

 Bay but are not to be found in the tables for either of the four districts, so that, as 

 given in these tables, the total catch for Bristol Bay for 1922 is greater than the sum 

 of the catches in the four districts. Such discrepancies are more conspicuous in 

 some of the other tables. 



In other cases we found that the data for some of the minor localities within a 

 larger unit were reliable and significant while many were not. In such cases it has 

 seemed best to give the detailed data in so far as they were reliable, even though they 

 aggregated but a small percentage of the catch in the larger district. As an instance 

 of this, in the Shumagin Island district we have given separate data for Acheredin 

 Bay, Orzinski Bay, Ivanof Bay, and Red Cove and have combined all the other 



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