ALASKA FISHERY AXD FUR-SEAL IXDUSTRIES, 1920. 149 



had all been derived from eggs deposited in the Yukon gravels 

 before ever the canner}^ was established. There could be no ques- 

 tion, therefore of impairment of the run having resulted in 1919 from 

 previous cannery operations. 



The only possible effect of the Carlisle cannery up to the present 

 time has been to diminish, by the number of salmon captured, the 

 runs which enter the river and are available to the native and white 

 inhabitants of the valle3^ In 1919 the company reported the capture 

 of 101,107 king salmon and 357.081 small salmon, largely chums. If 

 these had been captured upriver and dried, the king salmon would 

 then have averaged about 5 pounds each and the chums 1^ to 1^ 

 pounds. Adopting the lower figure, the cannery pack, dried, would 

 have amounted to 252 tons of king salmon and 223 tons of the smaller 

 varieties, or 175 tons altogether. This is held to be more than twice 

 any possible estimate of the amount of dried salmon actually put up 

 fhiring that season on tlie entire river. 



If the 100,000 kings and the 350,000 chums taken by the cannery 

 had been permitted to ascend the river, to what extent, we may ask, 

 would the situation have been helped? It would depend on the size 

 of the run and the proportion which, under the conditions of 1919, 

 would escape capture at the hands of the river fishermen. If the 

 fishing camps along the river were catching 50 per cent of the run, 

 the cannery fish would have added some 235 tons, and the catch 

 would thus have been more than doul)led. If they were capturing a 

 third of the run, the cannery fish would have increased their small 

 catch by over 150 tons. 



Data for such an estimate are not available. In the muddy waters 

 of the Yukon the sdiools of salmon are invisible, and no direct 

 estimate can be formed of their numbers. There is abundant evi- 

 dence, however, that a large majority of the king salmon running in 

 1919 were captured in nets or encountered nets and escaped from 

 them on the way into the river. AVhite fishermen and natives, prac- 

 tically without exception, including those who felt no liostility to the 

 cannery, agreed that the king salmon averaged smaller in size than 

 ever before and that the relatively few larger individuals were net 

 marked in the majority of cases. The same fishermen, operating in 

 the same localities in 1920, state almost without exception that the 

 king salmon in 1920 averaged large in size, and the number of net- 

 marked fish was so small as to be negligible. 



Many opportunities have occurred to observe elsewhere salmon 

 caught in wheels or traps above a district heavily fished with gill 

 nets. The results are always the same. The smaller salmon filter 

 tiirough the nets, which screen out the larger sizes, leaving the 

 average size of the escaping fish always greatly diminislied. And 

 many of the fish escape tiirough the Avelj after being temporarily 

 captured, the twine having become so tightly constricted about the 

 body as to leave permanent marks that can not be mistaken. At the 

 rack which was maintained in Wood River above the Nushagak fish- 

 ing district there was opportunity to examine the fish escaping 

 from gill nets that were capturing from 75 to 90 per cent of the 

 iiinning fish, but never were the escaping sockeyes so extensively 

 net marked as the Yukon king salmon are credibly reported to 

 have been in 1919. 



