1. Relation between adult spawn - 

 ing pink salmon and the return two years 

 later . — Records of the pink salmon catch 

 and escapement In Prince William Sound 

 show a good correlation "between the nura- 

 "ber of spawners and the size of the r\in 

 in key streams two years later (fig. 15). 

 Using this trend line, a poor run was 

 predicted for the So\md In 1957. 'Ehe 

 size of the rum was even smaller than 

 expected. 



The 1956 escapement was better — 

 9,500 fish per key stream. Tnerefore, 

 the most probable retiu-n in 195^ is 6 

 million fish, or about equal to the 1?5'5 

 run. ■P^e odds are 2 to 1 that the re- Figure 16. --Fry traps used to sample 



turn will be between U-^ and 74 million j 4. • .. 



_. , - j^, . ^'= , '"^^ ^ «^ downstream migrants 



fish, end there is only 1 chance in 20 ° 



that the return will be greater than 9 million or less than 3 million fish. TSiis is the 



most reliable forecast for 1958 now available. 



2. Eniinieration of pink and chum salmon fry . — An extensive fry sampling program 

 initiated this war in the Sound was concerned primarily with devising trapping techniques 

 and solving problem.s of sampling the intertidal areas. Progress and results so far include: 

 Fry traps (fig. I6) i^re fished at 8 locations In Prince William Sound throughout the 

 migration; fry migration occurred during all houjrs of the day but was greatest at night; 

 the proportion of fry captured by traps ranged from 2.2 to 13«3 percent as indicated by 

 marking and recovery experiments and stream flow studies; digging techniques using a 

 square yard quadrat sampler were developed as a means of sampling fry in the intertidal 

 areas. No date from these studies can be used to forecast the run for 1958« 



Problems yet to be solved include: Determ.ining the number of streams to sample to 

 obtain a reliable estimate of fry abundance for the entire Sound, effects of high tides on 

 trap location and efficiency, time and extent of sampling necessary in intertidal areas, 

 and improvement of fry marking techniques. 



3. Distribution and abundance of fingerllng pink 3eJ-mon .--Thls season emphasis was 

 placed on testing methods of capture of fingerllng salruon. Beach seines, bottom trawls, 

 and small-mesh gill nets proved ineffective as fingerllng sampling gear. High-speed, 

 meter-size tow nets were the most successful devices tested and were used to systemati- 

 cally sample Galena Bay and Port Gravlna areas- Catches were low, and the absence of 

 larger size fingerllng indicates that they either move out of the study sirea on reaching 



a certain size or that they are able to avoid the nets. A practical method of determining 

 the abundance of fingerllng salmon In the open waters of the Sound has yet to be devised. 



Under contract to the Pish and Wildlife Service, the Fisheries Research Institute 

 tagged salmon at 11 locations scattered throughout the Sound. A total of ^+,176 seilmon 

 including 3,320 pinks, 573 chums, 18^4 reds, 88 cohos, and 11 kings, was tagged. On 

 September 26, 688 recoveries (17 percent of those tagged) had been returned, including 

 323 from the Prince William Sound fishery, 3^3 from the Prince William Sound spawning 

 grounds, I6 from the Cook Inlet fishery, and 6 frcm the Copper River fishery. One of the 

 outstanding features of the early retiu"ns was the evidence of considerable wandering 

 within Prince '/fllllara Sound. 



COOK INI£T 



Cook Inlet red salmon production fell to an all-time low during 1957, probably 

 reflecting damage wrought by the vast increase in gesir and catch during the parent cycle 



