28 U. S. BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



derived from all of these investigations were made available on many 

 occasions to interested individuals and organizations, such as Stat© 

 conservation agencies and the National Resources Committee. 



]PUGET SOUND SALMON FISHERIES 



Cockeye. — The Puget Sound sockeye investigation was continued 

 by Dr. George A. Rounsefell. 



' Daily salmon catch statistics were collected for 1935 and 1936, espe- 

 cially on the Fraser River, where the individual gill net landings 

 were obtained for at least 90 percent of the catch. Daily purse seine 

 landings by boat were obtained for the past 12 j^ears, 1925 to 19?.6, 

 from Quatiiiaski, at the northern end of the Gulf of Georgia. It has 

 long been known that a portion of the Fraser River run used tlie 

 northern route instead of entering through the Strait of Juan de 

 Fuca but no information has been available on its size. In 1936 

 nearly half a million sockeye were taken in this area. In some years, 

 especially in 1915, 1926, and 1936, the gill nets in the Gulf of Georgia 

 and the lower Fraser River have done much better relatively, than 

 ihe gear in Puget Sound. Inasmuch as the 3 years in question were 

 extraordinarily warm, it may be possible that the proportion of the 

 run using the northern entrance is largely dependent on temperature. 

 In warm years the sockeye may be feeding farther to the north and 

 so strike the coast in the vicinity of Cape Scott at the northwestern 

 end of Vancouver Island, a fair proportion of the run thus continuing 

 down the inside of the Island. 



The usual samplying of the commercial catch was carried on at Ana- 

 cortes. A feature of the 1937 run was the small average size of the 

 sockeye, which greatly increased the cost of the raw fish to the can- 

 neries, as they bought the fish by the piece. The investigation now 

 has available samples of the commercial catch since 1934. The ages 

 of these fish have not been determined pending the completion of this 

 4-year cycle, but the 1937 scales are now mounted and their reading 

 is under way. 



In 1935 the Division of Fish Culture cooperated with the investiga- 

 tion by planting 76,0CK) fingerling sockeye (1934 ^gg collection from 

 the Birdsview hatchery on the Skagit River) in Cedar River, a tribu- 

 tary of Lake Washington, and a like number in Issaquah Creek, a 

 tributary of Lake Sammamish, which drains through the Sammamish 

 River into Lake Washington. It is planned during the spring to 

 watch at the Government locks and fish ladder leading into Lake 

 Washington and on the spawning grounds for adult sockeye, to de- 

 termine whether the plantings were successful in introducing this 

 valuable species. Judging from the available spawning grounds and 

 the general suitability of these lakes to coho and king salmon and to 

 ihe land-locked kokanee, they might be capable of supporting a 

 sockeye run of fair proportions. 



Since it is the duty of the recently formed International Pacific 

 Salmon Fisheries Commission to make a study of the sockeye runs to 

 the Fraser River system it is not planned to collect additional data on 

 this species. Work on the Fraser River sockeye will be discontinued 

 as soon as analysis of the data on hand has been completed. 



Dr. Rounsefell also carried on experiments in tagging in an effort 

 to develop tags suitable for the salmon work. Experiments with 



