B.— THE SEA FISHING-GROUNDS OF THE PACIFIC COAST 

 OF THE UNITED STATES. FEOM THE STRAITS OF 

 FUCA TO LOWER CALIFORNIA. 



By David S. Joedan. 



14. THE PACIFIC COAST FEOM THE STEAITS OF FUCA TO LOWER CALIFORNIA. 



Except the salmon fisheries of the Sacramento and the Columbia, and the ocean fisheries in 

 the immediate neighborhood of San Francisco, the fisheries of the Pacific coast exist only as 

 pos.sibilities. For the most part only .shore- fishing on the smallest scale is done, and no attempt 

 is made to discover offshore banks, or to develop them when discovered. The present report 

 can, therefore, only discuss the places where fishing is now actually carried on. 



South of Monterey the entire coast is made up of alternations of rocky headlands (riucones), 

 usually of sandstone, with long curves of sandy beaches, and is broken by occasional large and 

 small bays (esteros and lagunas). The immediate neighborhood of the shore has almost always 

 a sandy bottom, and is not very rich in either animal or vegetable life. Farther out, at varying 

 distances, is a belt of rocky bottom, thickly covered with the great kelp {Macrocystis pijrifera), 

 and beyond this there are occasional rocky reefs, usually continuous with the rincones on the 

 shore and with the rocky islands, which have the same origin. 



About these headlands and on the reefs some still-fishing is done, mainly for species of 

 rockfish (Sebastiehthys), and occasionally a gill-net is put down. The best known of these reefs 

 are about the islands of Santa Catalina and Anacapa, but they doubtless exist around all of the 

 islands in this region, which are mostly situated at a distance of about twenty miles from the shore. 

 The middle parts of the channels between are, in summer, the resorts of the large migratory fish, 

 which are caught in considerable numbers by trolling. Along the sandy beaches seining is 

 practiced, and gill-nets of little depth are set to catch the common shore-fishes (largely surf-fish, 

 roncadors, and flounders). In the bays of sufficient size seining is largely pursued, especially by 

 the Chinese. In some of the smaller bays the oil-shark (Galeorhinus) breeds, and is taken by 

 hook and line. Certain fishes (redfish, whitefish) are also taken in large numbers by still-fishing 

 along the line of the kelp. 



From Monterey to the mouth of the Columbia the coast is quite similar, but it is in general 

 more rocky, with less sand, and presents an additional feature in the existence of rivers of 

 considerable volume and more deeply indented bays. In all of these rivers there is a greater or 

 less run of salmon in the fall, and in those fed by snow water, in the spring also; and in many 

 these fish are taken for market purposes, in nearly every case by the use of gill-nets. The 

 number of rocky reefs seems to increase to the northward, and the number of species inhabiting 

 them is greater, so that both in Monterey Bay and about the Farallone Islands baited trawllines 



