PROGRESS IN BIOLOGICAL INQUIRIES, 1936 29 
records lost or destroyed. Data which may be urgently needed by 
some future investigation may at present be readily accessible; when 
needed, they may be impossible to obtain. 
HERRING 
The herring investigation, under the direction of E. H. Dahlgren, 
was again confined to southeastern Alaska, where the most intensive 
fishing has been carried on. Efforts were made to extend knowledge 
concerning the various populations which contribute to the fishery, as 
well as to search for the causes of observed fluctuations in abundance 
of these populations. 
To summarize the findings to date, it has been demonstrated that 
the stocks of herring which contribute to this fishery, instead of being 
a homogeneous unit, consist of a series of independent populations, 
or “races,” each with its own limited range. The delineation of the 
areas frequented by the various races, first undertaken by the analy- 
sis of biometrical measurements on a large number of individuals, 
has been made more definite by the development of a method of tag- 
ging. Early tagging experiments have established the fact that the 
most important single population on which the fishery draws is that 
which spawns in the vicinity of Sitka on Baranof Island, with a 
summer feeding area in the region of Cape Ommaney; that the 
population of next importance is that which spawns in the vicinity 
of Craig, on Prince of Wales Island, with its feeding area in the 
Iphigenia Bay region. It has also been demonstrated that the spawn- 
ing population from the Juneau area does not contribute to the sum- 
mer fishery in either of these areas, and that there is considerable 
intermingling between the Sitka and Craig population in the 
Iphigenia Bay region. 
An extension of the tagging program to include areas for which no 
data are yet available was undertaken during the year. Failure to 
locate the spawning herring in areas from which they have been re- 
ported as formerly abundant limited the scope of the proposed opera- 
tions. However, besides tagging 10,784 individuals on the Sitka 
spawning grounds and 4,880 at Craig in order to obtain further data 
on the migration and mortality of these two important populations, 
5,020 tags were affixed at Rose Inlet, about 50 miles south of Craig, 
in order to delimit the range of the Craig population, and 9,700 fish 
were tagged at Auke Bay, in the Juneau spawning area, to obtain 
information on the migrations of these fish, which comprise one of 
the major populations of the southeastern district. 
The recovery of 1,647 tags during the fishing season leads to the 
conclusions that: 1, The Sitka population supports the fishery not 
only of the Cape Ommaney area, but also of the east shore of Bara- 
not Island at least as far north as Red Bluff Bay; 2, the Craig popu- 
lation intermingles with the Sitka population to a greater extent than 
has hitherto been supposed, not only in the Iphigenia Bay region but 
also at Cape Ommaney; 3, the two populations of Craig and Sitka, 
which support the fishery in the Iphigenia Bay region, also appear 
later in the season in the Tebenkof area on the west coast of Kuiu 
Island, to support that run. The recovery of tags affixed to the 
Auke Bay spawners in the Douglas Island fishery proves that this 
area 1s dependent on the Juneau spawning area for its support; the 
