BUREAU OF FISHERIES TIt 
A record pack of salmon was canned in Alaska, amounting to 
319,000,000 pounds, valued at $46,000,000, representing an increase of 
105,000,000 pounds as compared with 1925. In California the pro- 
duction of canned sardines was the largest in the history of that 
industry, amounting to over 100,000,000 pounds, valued at $7,807,000. 
The total pack of salmon was 359,450,000 pounds, valued at $56,219,- 
000; of canned sardines in Maine and California, 143,415,000 pounds, 
valued at nearly $14,535,000; and the total value of canned fishery 
products and fishery by-products approximated $100,000,000. Our 
annual fishery harvest now exceeds 3,000,000,000 pounds, valued at 
$109,000,000 to the fishermen. 
Highly efficient service on the part of the bureau’s personnel has 
made possible the record of achievements given in this report. 
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 
NORTHERN PACIFIC HALIBUT CONVENTION 
Under the terms of the convention with Great Britain, ratified 
October 21, 1924, provision is made for an international fisheries 
commission, whose duty it is to have made a thorough investigation 
into the life history of the Pacific halibut and to make recommenda- 
tions as to what regulations are deemed necessary for the preservation 
and development of this fishery. The scientific staff, under the able 
direction of Will F. Thompson, has vigorously prosecuted the work 
and completed the first phase of it, which relates to the development 
of means and methods of research, the crystallization of plans of 
procedure, and beginning the active prosecution of such work. A 
preliminary report has been made to the commission. 
A thorough statistical study has been made of market landings and 
fishermen’s logs. From the pilot-house logs of the fishing vessels a 
record has been obtained of the vessels’ movements, the amount of 
gear fished day by day, the locality of capture, and the estimated 
weight of the fish taken. For 1926, records were taken for nearly 
260,000 units of gear, which took 19,400,000 pounds of halibut, or 35 
per cent of the total Pacific coast catch. These records indicate a 
shifting of the center of fishing operations from Hecate Strait in 
1910 to Portlock Bank in 1926. The log records also are valuable as 
a measure of abundance of the fish supply and the rate of decline of 
the catch. In Hecate Strait, for example, the catch of fish per skate 
of gear in 1906 was 450 pounds, declining to 143 pounds in 1914 and 
47 pounds in 1926. The evidence is plain that the southern and 
older fishing banks are becoming steadily less productive and that 
the proportionate number of smaller fish in the catch is increasing. 
Nearly 9,000 halibut have been tagged. Of the fish tagged on the 
southern banks in 1925 and 1926, about 16 per cent have been recov- 
ered. The migrations on these banks appear small, the average extent 
of movement being less than 20 miles. The evidence indicates that 
the immature fish do not migrate to any extent. On the offshore 
banks of the Gulf of Alaska and on the Aleutians, where the fish are 
more mature, indications are that the mature fish become more migra- 
tory. Thirty-three fish recovered from nearly 1,800 fish released 
averaged 275 miles, with 865 miles as the maximum. This enables us 
