172 
THE TAHOE HATCHERY. 
The new Tahoe Hatchery is now com- 
pleted and ready for occupancy. It has 
become more and more evident for several 
years past that the supply of water at 
the old hatchery site was entirely in- 
adequate, and several years ago property 
about one mile east was secured, together 
with the water rights to Walker Springs. 
In fact the site secured is the only one 
available at the present time. The springs 
furnish a purer and colder water supply 
than any stream flowing into the lake. 
Furthermore, a supply of water from 
springs is more dependable than that 
from a stream, in that there is less danger 
of lack of water during a dry season. 
The new hatchery contains sixty-four 
troughs and will have a capacity of about 
two and a half million trout. Provision 
has also been made for breeding ponds 
and nursery ponds. A superintendent’s 
cottage is being built. 
This new hatchery is made the more 
necessary because of the lack of water 
at the Tallac Hatchery during the past 
few years. The new Tahoe Hatchery is 
of sufficient size to handle practically all 
of the black-spotted trout operations. 
The old hatchery building will be 
CALIFORNIA FISH AND GAME. 
utilized as a 
center 
ground. 
laundry and community 
in connection with the camp 
THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
In 1888 the Mount Shasta Hatchery 
consisted of one building, forty by sixty 
feet, containing forty-four troughs. Its 
capacity was a few hundred thousand 
trout and salmon. At the present time 
the Mount Shasta Hatchery comprises 
seventeen acres with five large hatching 
houses containing 450 troughs, together 
with superintendent’s cottages, spawning 
house, kitchen, barn, sheds and garage. 
Vifty large rearing ponds for trout and 
three larger ponds for salmon complete 
the equipment. The hatchery output 
averages more than 10,000,000 trout and 
salmon per year. 
FOOD FOR TROUT INTRODUCED, 
The Department of Fishculture is en- 
deavyoring to conserve the fish supply by 
introducing new trout food in the lakes 
of the southern Sierra and Tahoe basin. 
Insects, such as salmon flies; crustaceans, 
such as gammarus; and aquatie plants 
are being introduced. 
COMMERCIAL FISHERY NOTES. 
N. B. Scorretp, Editor. 
THE STATUS OF THE TUNA. 
The Fish and Game Commission 
recently received a letter from one of our 
leading sporting magazines calling atten- 
tion to the fact that a seaplane had been 
used at San Pedro in locating schools of 
tuna. They also sent this Commission a 
letter which they had received from a 
Californian protesting against this “‘con- 
temptible practice’ as they called it, and 
Stating that the “fish canning companies 
of the state by this method are destroy- 
ing this wonderful Pacifie Coast fish, the 
tuna.” 
As this is the kind of opposition which 
any new method of fishing receives 
whether it is actually destructive or not, 
the reply made is appended: i 
The tuna has been recognized as a 
commercial fish for many years in Europe. 
The only reason it has not been recog- 
nized as a commercial fish on the Atlantic 
and Pacific coasts of the United States 
is because we have not appreciated its 
value as a food fish. So far the tuna, 
which we eall here the blue-fin or leaping 
tuna (Thunnus thynnus), has been taken 
in commercial quantities only a couple of 
years, and we are quite sure that the 
species is in no immediate danger of 
being exterminated or of being seriously 
depleted. 
he albacore, which the United States 
Bureau of Food and Drugs permits our 
canners to label as long-finned tuna, and 
which is the whitemeat tuna found in 
the markets, his been taken commercially 
in large quantities for the last seven or 
eight years. The albacore is taken with 
hook and line only but the quantity taken 
in one season has been as high as thirty 
million pounds, or six times the weight 
of blue-fin tuna taken in any one year. 
This Commission has been employing 
fisheries investigators for the past three 
years to make a thorough investigation 
of the albacore to determine if it was 
being overfished and likely to become seri- 
