20 



FISHEKIES OF ALASKA, 1908. 



the year. The export demand for red salmon, which fell off consid- 

 erably in 1907, was this year better than ever. 



Persons engaged. — The fishermen engaged this year numbered 

 3,378, of whom almost two-thirds were white. The cannery em- 

 ployees numbered 7,214, among whom the Japanese were for the 

 first time more numerous than any other single nationality. The 

 transporters numbered 493, a slight decrease from 1907. In all, 

 11,085 persons (4,403 whites, 2,250 Indians, 2,415 Japanese, and 

 2,017 Chinese) were employed in this branch of the fishing industry. 



Persons Engaged in the Salmon Canning Industry in 1908. 



Investment. — There were 129 steamers and launches and 37 sailing 

 vessels engaged in transporting. Of these the ship Lucille was wrecked 

 and lost at the mouth of the Ugashik River, in Bristol Bay, on August 

 19, and the bark Star of Bengal was wrecked and lost off Coronation 

 Island, in southeast Alaska, on September 20, with an appalling loss 

 of life. 



Gill nets were the principal form of apparatus in use, by far the 

 greater part being employed in western Alaska. Purse seines, which 

 have been employed almost exclusively heretofore in southeast 

 Alaska, are coming into use in central Alaska. Haul seines and 

 traps are most numerous in southeast Alaska. A wheel appears in 

 the table for the first time. 



There were 50 canneries in operation (23 in southeast Alaska, 8 in 

 central Alaska, and 19 in western Alaska), an increase of 2 over 1907. 

 One of the reserve canneries in western Alaska was reopened, and 

 there was a new cannery, that of the Astoria and Puget Sound Packing 

 Company, on Excursion Inlet, southeast Alaska, in operation. 



