Figure 4. — Distribution of herring catches at Kodiak, 

 1936-59. 



samples taken during those years may repre- 

 sent a heterogeneous population. The possi- 

 bility of a mixture of fish with different genetic 

 or morphological characteristics requires that 

 considerable discretion be used in interpreting 

 data from a particular fishery, especially when 

 these data are used in studying the population 

 dynamics of an entire district. The biologists 

 gathering the herring data were aware of the 

 problem and performed limited studies to de- 

 fine the extent of mixing, but the results of the 

 investigations were not conclusive. 



EXPLANATION OF TABLES 



The weight of the annual catches, the catch 

 quota (permitted by regulation), and the data 

 taken by the biologists in the reduction plants 

 are presented in the tables that follow. The 

 districts and the years for which data are pre- 

 sented are: Southeastern Alaska, 1929-66; 

 Prince William Sound, 1937-58; Resurrection 

 Bay-Day Harbor, 1941-57; and Kodiak, 1936- 

 59. 



Although some of the data presented here 

 have appeared elsewhere (International North 

 Pacific Fisheries Commission, 1961; Dahlgren 

 and Kolloen, 1943, 1944; Kolloen and Elling, 

 1948), earlier publications were largely con- 

 cerned with contemporary management of the 

 fishery and were often incomplete. Skud, Sa- 

 kuda, and Reid (1960) presented summaries 

 of the landings by statistical areas for the re- 

 duction fishery from 1929 to 1956 but did not 

 report on the biological characteristics of fish 

 making up the catches. 



Catches in Alaska Herring Reduction 

 Fishery (Table 1) 



Table 1 gives the annual catches (weight) 

 of herring and the number of boats involved. 

 The catches are given in short tons (2,000 lb.) , 

 although fishermen were usually paid by the 

 barrel (about 250 lb.) . I converted the number 

 of barrels reported on the "fish ticket" — a de- 

 livery receipt that documented the amount of 

 fish a vessel delivered to the reduction plant — 

 into tons. In 1958 continuous-weighing ma- 

 chines were installed at several plants in south- 

 eastern Alaska to weigh the catches more 

 rapidly. Fishermen did not trust the weighing 

 machines, however, and plant operators re- 

 verted to the original process of measurement 

 — -filling and dumping a barrel-sized hopper. 

 Although variations in the size of individual 

 herring from landing to landing may have af- 

 fected the relation between volume and weight 

 and therefore the true tonnage of fish delivered, 

 I consider the variation negligible. 



Some of the catch data in Table 1 differ 

 slightly from those in earlier publications (In- 

 ternational North Pacific Fisheries Commis- 

 sion, 1961; Dahlgren and Kolloen, 1943, 1944; 



