10 CALIFORNIA FISH AND GAME. 



hor swimiut'ivts ;il ull seasons of llie year. From evidence tliut lias 

 been gathered it is certain that the eggs are carried at least two months 

 on tlie outside of the body before tliey hatch and the life of the shrimp 

 from the egg through one spawning time is not less than two years. 

 They feed on minute animal and plant life at the bottom. They may 

 at times feed near the surface for they can swim rather rapidly through 

 the water, moving with the head first. 



Character and Quantity of the Catch. The catch of one junk for one 

 tide varied from ten hundred pounds to ten tons. An average day's 

 catch for the l)oats using forty nets was six thousand pounds and for 

 the boats using sixty nets, eight thousand pounds. The nets always 

 contain young fish, the quantity varying from 10 per cent to 75 per cent 

 of the entire catch. Tlie boats using sixty nets each on the shallow 

 f.ats on the west side of San Pablo Bay caught the greatest proportion 

 of young fish. The reason for this is that most of the fish Avhich enter 

 San Francisco Bay enter for the purpose of spawning. Among these 

 fish the valuable ones are the herring, smelt, striped bass, shad and 

 salmon. Besides these the young of other valuable commercial species, 

 such as the crab and the sole, enter the bay for the purpose of feeding 

 and for protection. A bay with rivers entering it is always a nursery 

 for young fish. Where there is an intermingling of fresh and salt water 

 as in the upper San Francisco Bay there is a prodigal growth of small 

 animal life, including shrimps and other species of small crustaceans. 

 Upon this small life the young fishes feed. The young fish are there 

 because the shrimps are there. A method of shrimp fishing such as 

 that employed by the Chinese, which catches the young fish as readily 

 as the shrimps and holds them until they are suffocated, is a serious 

 menace to the whole fishing industry of the bay and its tributary rivers. 

 Even if they caught only shrimps, there is a limit to the number which 

 should be caught for they are the food of our more valuable fishes, but 

 when the method of fishing takes the young fish themselves in vast 

 quantities, as did the Chinese nets in upper San Francisco Bay, it 

 should not be tolerated if we value the other fisheries, or if we value the 

 shrimp itself, for there is every evidence that even the shrimps were 

 being overfished. To appreciate the seriousness of the situation as it 

 existed in 1910, just imagine the nineteen Chinese junks Avith their 

 combined nets numbering one thousand, each one having a mouth open- 

 ing of 24x4^ feet, straining the small fish and shrimps from the rushing 

 water, tide after tide. The total annual catch by the Chinese junks at 

 tlie time they were stopped from fishing in 1911 was considerably in 

 ■excess of ten million pounds of fresh shrimps and fish combined. Of 

 this amount no more tlian eight hundred thousand pounds of the 

 shrimps were used fresh. The rest was all dried and marketed as 

 dried shrimp meat and fertilizer. 



After the Chinese method of fishing was stopped it was found that the 

 Italian method as employed in the early days was not profitable, for 

 the shrimps were too scarce and there were no more flounders or tomcod. 

 Neither Avas the shrimp beam trawl profitable for the shrimps Avere not 

 plentiful enough for that method and the nets AA'ere torn on the Chinese 

 shrimp stakes driven all over the bay. As no other method of catching 

 shrimps Avas employed and as the market Avas bare of shrimps, the 



