80 PACIFIC SALMON FISHERIES. 
The after end of this platform has a long roller. The purse seine 
is stowed on this platform, the head rope with corks on one side 
and the foot line on the other, so that there will be no tangling 
when the seine is paid out. 
When the lookout sights a school of fish, the seiner is rundown 
close to it and a rowboat launched. One man takes his place in 
this with the rope from one end of the seine and acts as a pivot, 
while the seiner circles around the school, the crew paying out the 
seine as she moves along. When it is all out, the vessel runs along- 
side the rowboat and takes aboard the other rope. Attaching 
this and the rope from the other end to the power winch, the circle 
around the fish is rapidly narrowed, and the slack of the seine as 
it comes in is stowed back on the platform. Around the bottom 
of the seine and through galvanized iron rings about 5 inches in 
diameter, runs the purse line. As this is hauled into the boat, the 
Open space at the bottom is rapidly closed up just as a handbag 
would be through the drawing together of the pursing string at the 
top. During this operation the nonpower purse seiners have a man 
standing alongside the rail who throws a pole into the center in order 
to drive the fish away from the open section. He is so skillful in 
this work that almost invariably the pole comes back to his hand 
as the pressure, of the waters forces it up again. When the bottom 
has been pursed up the fishermen hauling by hand can move more 
leisurely, but with the power winches in use the hauling in of the 
net is a comparatively easy matter, and the pole thrower is dispensed 
with. 
When all the fish are in the bunt and the latter alongside, the 
fish are generally dipped out by means of a dip net balanced on 
the end of a tackle. A fisherman lowers it into the seine, scoops 
up a load of salmon, and as the net is hauled up, guides it over 
the vessel, and then trips it and dumps the fish into the hold. 
The Puget Sound purse seiners meet the salmon off the entrance 
to the Strait of San Juan de Fuca and follow the sockeyes till they 
have passed out of American waters, what are known as the Salmon 
Banks, off the lower end of San Juan Island, being the principal 
rendezvous during the run of sockeyes. After this run is over they 
go up the Sound and fish for dogs and cohos, and later go to the 
head of the Sound and fish for dogs, cohos, chinooks, and steel- 
head trout. In southeast Alaska they follow the fish all overthe 
bays, straits, and sounds of that section. Purse seines are used 
in a few other places, but the fishery is secondary to those with other 
forms of apparatus. 
This style of fishing is said to have been introduced on Puget 
Sound by the Chinese in 1886. 
