PACIFIC SALMON FISHERIES. 15 
The principal thing that this and some of the other many experi- 
ments in salmon marking prove is that the percentage of salmon 
which accidentally lose, either through disease or the attacks of their 
many enemies, one or more of their fins, or portions of same, is much 
larger than most people suppose. Out of the many millions taken 
annually in commercial and fish cultural operations it is not surprising 
that some should be minus such exposed portions of their anatomy 
and this percentage would doubtless be found to be considerable were 
particular attention directed toward it. As if is now, it is only 
occasionally that the fisherman notices such loss, or mentions the 
same when he does, unless his attention has been directed to it by 
particular inquiry. In the Chamberlain experiment, for instance, 
after 1907 considerable publicity was given to the search for such 
marked fish, and the writer, in his travels through southeast Alaska 
during the succeeding years until the end of 1911, frequently was told 
by fishermen that they had caught salmon with missing fins. Inquiry 
developed that while a few of the lost fins were the same as Chambet- 
lain had excised, a number were entirely different fins, showing that 
when the attention of fishermen was directed especially in this line 
many deformed fish would be found. 
The confusion resulting from the many marking experiments 
carried on by different people shows the absolute necessity of some 
central authority regulating them if any real results are to be achieved 
from this line of endeavor. In 1908 the Secretary of Commerce, under 
authority of sections 11 and 12 of the Alaska fisheries law, directed 
that any persons desiring to mark and release salmon in Alaska first 
consult with and secure the written consent of the Commissioner of 
Fisheries or of the agent at the salmon fisheries of Alaska. It would 
be an excellent thing if some such control could also be exercised 
over these operations in the coastal States. 
During the year 1916 Dr. Charles H. Gilbert, of Stanford Univer- 
sity, assisted by Willis H. Rich, conducted salmon-marking experi- 
ments on an extensive scale. Late in the fall of 1915 a consignment 
of 100,000 eggs of the red salmon ‘was forwarded to Seattle, Wash., 
from the station of the Bureau of Fisheries at Yes Bay, Alaska, of 
which 50,000 were reshipped to the Anderson Lake hatchery of the 
British Columbia Fisheries Department, located on the ocean side of 
Vancouver Island. The remaining 50,000 were sent to the Bureau 
of Fisheries hatchery at Quinault Lake, near the coast of Washington. 
The intention was as soon as the fry, hatched from these eggs, had 
developed into fingerlings to mark each lot with a distinctive marking 
and plant them in waters near the hatcheries, with the object of 
roving that the adult fish would return to the stream in which they 
ad passed their early existence, no matter where the eggs were taken. 
This plan could not be carried out at Anderson Lake, as the young 
fish resulting from the eggs, which were sent there, were not strong 
enough to survive the experiment. ‘They were terefore liberated 
without marking. Those hatched at Quinault Lake were marked, 
however, and liberated in the summer of 1916. Dr. Gilbert has 
strong hopes that upon the return of the marked fish important 
data relating to the life history of the species will be obtained. 
During February, March, and April, 1916, some 50,000 yearling 
sockeyes, which had been reared at the Bonneville hatchery of the 
Oregon Fish and Game Commission from eggs obtained from the Yes 
