PACIFIC COAST FISHERIES. 

 Product of the oyster industry of Puyet Sound. 



297 



ALASKA. 

 GROWTH OF THE FISHING INDUSTRY. 



Until a few years ago the wonderful fishery resources of Alaska were 

 little known except to the natives of the country. Attention was called 

 to this distant portion of the United States by Dr. Tarleton H. Bean, 

 of the United States Fish Commission, in the report of the Commis- 

 sion for 1880. This report was extensively copied and was read with 

 great interest, and its accounts of the wonderful abundance of salmon 

 and other fish were by many received with doubts similar to those 

 entertained two hundred and fifty years T3efore regardiug the reports 

 carried to Europe as to the abundance of fish oft' the New England 

 coast. Time has proved that the statements of Dr. Bean were quite 

 moderate and fully reliable. Notwithstanding the great abundance of 

 fish in Alaskan waters, the total value of the fish utilized in 1880 by 

 others than natives was shown to have been insignificant. 



Soon after attention had been called to Alaska and its resources by 

 the United States Fish Commission, many persons engaged in the salmon 

 business on the Columbia and other coast rivers gave the subject of 

 Alaskan fisheries careful consideration. Although the fish were very 

 abundant, the great distance of the grounds and the exjiense necessary 

 to establish a plant there were considered to involve too great a risk to 

 warrant the inauguration of fisheries. The first experiment having 

 proven a financial success, the doubtful watchers, slowly at first and 

 later with more eagerness, followed, until at the present time it will be 

 seen that over half of the aggregate pack of salmon in the United 

 States and nearly half of the pack of the entire world comes from 

 Alaska. 



The large area, and the wide distances between inhabited stations 

 of this vast domain, render the gathering of complete general and 

 statistical information a matter of much time, difficulty, and expense. 

 Fortunately, so far as the fisheries are concerned, the various fishing 

 firms in Alaska have their home stations and headquarters at San 

 Francisco, or in Wasliington and Oregon, and can be reached with com- 

 parative ease. The instructions to the writer on his last investigation 

 of the fisheries of the Pacific Coast in 1892 called for such statistical 

 information regardiug the Alaskan fisheries as could be procured 

 without visiting that Territory. Each of the headquarter offices, as 

 previously mentioned, was visited, and through the courtesy of the 



