486 Memoir Sears Foundation for Marine Research 



Canada has always had more Atlantic Salmon than New England, and the area 

 occupied by the Canadian fishery has seen less industrial development than the area 

 originally frequented by Atlantic Salmon in New England. It was stated in 1 93 1 that de- 

 pletion in the Maritime Provinces of Canada was particularly evident in rivers emptying 

 into the Bay of Fundy, and in some cases it had progressed to total extinction {^g). 

 The Petitcodiac River system in New Brunswick afforded an example of a stop just 

 short of extinction. However, in 1958 it was reported that Atlantic Salmon in fluctu- 

 ating numbers occur in 300 rivers of Canada's Atlantic provinces (^5: 19), with 75% 

 of the population being restricted to six principal river systems of New Brunswick and 

 Newfoundland. 



The largest recorded commercial catch in Canadian waters, exclusive of New- 

 foundland, was taken in 1873 and amounted to 6,698,200 pounds. The largest for 

 United States waters was 205,679 pounds in 1888. At present the total Canadian catch, 

 including Newfoundland, totals up to 3,000,000 pounds a year, one-half to two-thirds 

 of which comes from Newfoundland, including Labrador. U.S. commercial production 

 is now less than 1,000 pounds. From the 1888 high in New England, the catch de- 

 clined so that about 50 years later (i 932-1 938) it varied between 16,000 and 40,000 

 pounds; and during the next ten years it averaged only 3,600 pounds, less than 2 "/q 

 of what it had been about 60 years before. 



The total Canadian angling catch in recent years has been 75,000 Salmon per 

 year. Of this, the Miramichi River, N. B., reputed to be the greatest salmon river in 

 the world, contributed 30,000, followed by the Restigouche with 3,000; all the New- 

 foundland rivers combined yielded 20,000 fish, and the Quebec rivers 12,000 (pr). 

 In Maine, the combined angler's catch for 1956 was only 278 fish {148: 212). 



Lumbering and agriculture, by removing natural soil cover, have exposed large 

 areas to erosion, thus creating several conditions detrimental to this species, including 

 silting of stream beds, floods, and summer low water. Floods wash out nests and eggs 

 and destroy the homes of the fry and fingerlings. Low water not only enables predators 

 to more readily see and capture the young, but it results in higher summer tempera- 

 tures that sometimes reach the lethal point for Salmon. Spraying forests with ddt 

 and other chemicals to control insects (such as the spruce bud-worm and others) has 

 recently created another danger. Not only is ddt harmful to many of the insects on 

 which the young feed, but it is directly destructive to the fish themselves (^ ; 86 \ y^. 

 Pollution of stream waters by poisonous chemicals and other wastes has also been iji- 

 jurious, sometimes directly, and sometimes indirectly through the removal of oxygen 

 from the water. 



The more recent use of rivers for the development of hydroelectric power has 

 added other destructive conditions; either the spawning grounds are eliminated through 

 the creation of large lakes, or the young are destroyed in going over the spillway or 

 through the turbines. Irrigation projects involving dam construction and creation of 

 storage basins also obstruct their ascent and eliminate spawning grounds. 



Whether Salmon predators, for example mergansers and kingfishers, are more or 



