REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES. 39 



noticeable run of salmon in the McCloud River. The work at this 

 pioneer salmon hatchery was reduced to the care of the eggs shipped 

 from its Mill Ci-eek auxiliary. The output, consisting of 2,280,000 

 Nos. 1^ and 2 fingerlings, was planted in the McCloud Kiver. 



The season of 1918 was one of the most successful for shad produc- 

 tion on the Pacific coast. Two field hatcheries operated at Willa- 

 mette Falls and St. Helens, Oreg., as auxiliaries of the Clackamas 

 station, collected 17,265,000 shad eggs from the fishermen's catch. 



CULTIVATION OF MARINE SPECIES. 



Marine-fish culture, conducted at the three New England stations — 

 Boothbay Harbor, Me. ; Gloucester, Mass. ; and Woods Hole, Mass. — 

 was as a whole successful. 



Perhaps the most effective branch of this work is that addressed to 

 the winter flounder (Pseudopleuronectes) , a species that within a few 

 years has assumed great commercial value in Massachusetts and is 

 now rapidly growing in importance in Maine, giving employment to 

 many persons and yielding good returns at a time when there is little 

 else for the fishermen to do. At Boothbay Harbor egg collections 

 from local waters, especially Linekins Bay, aggregated 1,326,408,000, 

 from which 1,279,256,000 fry were hatched and planted, a very high 

 percentage. At Gloucester, where the catch of gravid flounders was 

 below the average for the past three years, 152,020,000 eggs were 

 taken, and 138,990,000 fry were obtained therefrom, the percentage of 

 hatch being about 91.5. The flounder work at Woods Hole was the 

 most extensive in the history of the station. Most of the ego^s, aggre- 

 gating 1,433,613,000, were obtained from Waquoit Bay fish, but other 

 points on Vineyard Sound and Buzzards Bay yielded considerable 

 numbers, while at a field station established at Wickford, R. I., on 

 Narragansett Bay, 323,238,000 eggs were secured and sent to Woods 

 Hole for incubation. The output was 1,098,130,000 fry and 137,816,- 

 000 eyed eggs which latter had to be planted because of the crowded 

 condition of the hatchery. 



The hatching of eggs of the shore cod was on such a small scale as to 

 be practically a failure at all stations. There was a fairly large collec- 

 tion of eggs for the Gloucester hatchery, but the low density of the 

 water produced a heavy mortality among the eggs undergoing incu- 

 bation and made undesirable the sending of other eggs wmch, to the 

 number of several hundred million, were in consequence deposited 

 on the spawning grounds. 



A force of spawn takers working among the Gloucester haddock and 

 pollock fishermen took large numbers of eggs from fish that had been 

 caught for market. Upward of 1,110,470,000 pollock eggs were col- 

 lected and 702,250,000 fry were hatched and planted. An experimen- 

 tal shipment of pollock eggs from Gloucester to Boothbay Harbor was 

 intended to prepare the way for regular consignments on occasions 

 when the Gloucester hatchery is overflowing. The pollock eggs, 

 arranged on trays surrounded by snow and rockweed, and packed in a 

 field shipping case, arrived in good condition after a 12-hour railway 

 trip and hatched with normal loss. Haddock eggs to the number of 

 332,740,000 were obtained; 127,190,000 of these had to be planted 

 owing to the low density of the hatchery water, the remainder pro- 

 ducing 129,400,000 fry. 



