INTRODUCTION 



The fishery for Sardinops caerulea, known as "sardine" in California 

 and "pilchard** in the Pacific Northwest, became important during the war 

 of 1914-1918 and has since grown to be the largest in North Americao It 

 started in California and reached its greatest development hereo As early 

 as 1919;, research on the fishery was under way by the California State 

 Fisheries Laboratory,, an agency of the California Division of Fish and 

 Gamso More recentlyj as the fishing spread into northern waters, Oregon, 

 Washington, and British Columbia have engaged in research and, since 1937, 

 the Uo So Bureau of Fisheries, later becoming a part of the Uo So Fish 

 and Wildlife Service, has also participatedo With five agencies working 

 together, this has become a cooperative research program, in the best 

 senseo In the spring of 1936 and annually since then, the biologists 

 have met to discuss the problems of this fishery euod to coordinate their 

 efforts to solve themo 



Out of the research activities and from these meetings there came 

 evidence of the complexity of the problem of research on the sardine and 

 of the need for clarifying relations between various phases of the re- 

 searcho These have been discussed periodically and at length within the 

 staff of the South Pacific Investigations of the Uo So Fish and Wildlife 

 Service o At one of these staff meetings was drafted a statement of ob- 

 jectives and of the information required to attain themo As the time for 

 the 1942 conference approached, Dr<. Richard Van Cl«ve, Chief of the Bureau 

 of Marine Fisheries of the California Division of Fish and Game, suggested 

 the desirability of a formulated outline as a guide for discussiono In 

 collaboration with Vernon Brock of the Oregon Fish Commission, such an 

 outline was drawn, following a procedural diagram which I constructed at 

 the same time, and embodjdng results from our Service staff meetings and 

 the suggestions of Dro Van Cleve and Mro Brooke The diagram mentioned 

 ( opposite ) thus represents the ideas of a nxjmber of personso It 

 was distributed and discussed at the 1942 meeting of the five agencies 

 •without eliciting demands for important revisions o While the program 

 is thus the product 'of a number of persons, the exposition given herewith 

 is that of the Fish and Wildlife Service laboratory at Stanford University 

 and includes argument on what may be considered controversial topics. 

 It is appropriate, then^, that the responsibility for the exposition be 

 assumed by the author who hastens to add that the program is subject to 

 constant revisiono 



This discussion is mainly an elaboration and justification of the 

 diagramg which by itself is somewhat cryptic, owing to the compression 

 of complicated ideas into short phrases « In the outline the titles of 

 procedures or projects either under way or rather fully planned are en- 

 closed in solid-line rectangles and connected with the others by solid 

 lines o Those recognized as desirabl® or essential but not yet integrated 

 into the working program are indicated by broken lines o Heavier lines 

 follow the main procedural path and lighter ones connect tributary adjust- 

 ments with the main procedural lines „ The titles at the left margin. 



