PACIFIC SALMON 



65 



Great care was exercised in selecting ap- 

 propriate places and in planting the eggs or 

 fry, but unfortunately the experiments were 

 not followed up sufficiently to determine the 

 results, even at the points where plantings 

 were made. Such experiments are crucial in 

 two diverse respects: (1) Do the fish return 

 to the place at which they were planted, and 

 to what extent? (2) Does any part of the 

 plant return to other tributaries in the river 

 system in which they were planted, and, if 

 so, under what environmental conditions? 



My own observations and experiments 

 seem to show that if adult sockeyes return to 

 a stream at all, they return only to certain 

 points in it. Their route is determined by 

 environmental conditions present at the time 

 of their return and that return is controlled 

 not by the geographic location of the point 

 of spawning of adults or planting of young, 

 but by the influence of exciting environ- 

 mental conditions. In the case of plantings 

 made in the Skagit River above the Baker 

 the fish will return, if at all, not to the 

 upper Skagit and to the tributary in which 

 they were planted, but under present condi- 

 tions to the Baker River. 



Plantings of Salmon in Foreign 

 Waters 



Salmon eggs or fry have been at various 

 times planted in waters that had no rela- 

 tion to their ancestral home. Confidence 

 has been generally expressed that the adults 

 would return to the stream or lake in which 

 the plant was made. Records of these ex- 

 periments are scanty, scattered and incom- 

 plete. It looks as if the confidence felt was 

 regarded as adequate evidence of the results. 

 Of unsuccessful plants made in streams that 

 were not known to be salmon waters, I have 

 found no printed records but I have been 

 told of such plants from which no salmon 

 returned. 



At one time three million eyed eggs from 

 Yes Bay, Alaska, were brought down, 

 hatched and planted at Baker Lake, Wash- 

 ington. The Yes Bay strain is one of the 

 largest and finest of all sockeyes obtained 

 anywhere on the entire Pacific coast. The 



plant was made years ago and the strain 

 is said to be recognized even today among the 

 fish caught below the dam on the Baker 

 River. Nothing is more certain than that 

 the route followed and the feeding grounds 

 visited by these fish were entirely foreign to 

 their ancestral record. But the experiment 

 dealt with waters known to support a run 

 of the same type of Pacific salmon. 



The results of planting fish in Masset In- 

 let by Pritchard (1938) have an important 

 bearing on this phase of the problem. Large 

 runs of pink salmon occur in some districts 

 only every second year. Masset Inlet is an 

 extreme example. An effort was made in 

 three "off" years to establish a run. The 

 results are stated thus : "On the basis of the 

 three completed experiments the conclusion 

 is inevitable that the transfer of pink salmon 

 eggs from the Tlell River to McClinton 

 Creek in an effort to build an 'off' year run 

 has been unsuccessful. ' ' 



Equally striking was the series of experi- 

 ments conducted by Foerster (1934a : 61-2), 

 summarized as follows : Since the rock slide 

 in 1913 at and above Hell's Gate in the 

 Fraser River, the runs of sockeye salmon to 

 the upper areas of the river system have been 

 very small. For many years efforts have 

 been made to restore the runs by the trans- 

 plantation of eggs and fry from the lower 

 areas of the river and from the Skeena River. 

 An experiment designed to test the success 

 of such a procedure was undertaken on 

 Eagle River, a tributary of Shuswap Lake. 

 Prior to 1913 Shuswap Lake was one of the 

 most important areas for sockeye salmon 

 propagation and Eagle River one of its 

 most important spawning streams. In the 

 spring of 1929 the Department of Fisheries 

 planted 17,000,000 Cultus Lake eyed eggs 

 in this river and the Biological Board liber- 

 ated 123,550 marked fingerlings from retain- 

 ing ponds. In 1932, 17 unmarked sockeye 

 were obtained at the counting fence erected 

 in the river and one marked individual from 

 the experiment of the succeeding year. Fif- 

 teen marked fish were captured in commer- 

 cial nets in the Fraser River. In the late 

 summer of 1930, 271,632 marked fingerlings 

 reared from eggs obtained from the Adams 



