CENTRAL AND WESTERN ALASKA INVESTIGATION. 149 



when it is considered that throughout this district the red salmon 

 mainly mature at 5 rather than at 4 years of age, the improbability 

 is manifest of explaining the shortage of 1919 by anything which oc- 

 curred in 1915. The question whether in general the Bristol Bay 

 streams give evidence oi overfishing must now be considered. 



HAS THE KVICHAK-NAKNEK DISTRICT BEEN OVERFISHED? 



There is an unbroken series of pack statistics for the Nushagak 

 River, reaching back to 1893, and for each of the other rivers of 

 Bristol Bay since 1904. Some allowance must be made for a certain 

 degree of inaccuracy, because fish were in some measure reported in 

 favor of the district in which thej were packed, regardless of wheie 

 they were captiu-ed. No attempt is made to disentangle the Kvichak- 

 Naknek complex, for the fishery is conducted to a large extent in 

 the open off the mouth of the Naknek River and farther to the south, 

 and contains Naknek and Kvichak fish in unknown proportions. This 

 is equally_ true at both the Ugaguk and the Ugashik Rivere, for the 

 great Kvichak migration sweeps past the mouths of these rivers, 

 and fishing in these cases also is partly done in the open. It can not 

 be said then that stream statistics for the eastern shore of Bristol 

 Bay are wholly reliable, the element of doubt increasing as the mouth 

 of the Kvichak is approached. The three rivere are very similar in 

 their lower courses, with wide stream beds at high tide, choked with 

 sediment; and at low water having extensively exposed sand and 

 mud flats with greatly restricted channels. Fishing has always been 

 freely permitted, practically without restriction, in all these streams, 

 and while the statistics do not of themselves give reliable data, there 

 are probably few who will assert, and fewer yet who believe, that these 

 rivers now carry the body of salmon they formerly produced. 



But in spite of inaccuracies, which dfetract from their value as 

 stream statistics, they constitute a highly valuable record. Extend- 

 ing as they do over a period of 15 years, dui-in^ all of which intensive 

 fishing has been in progress, it would seem they should fm-nish un- 

 equivocal evidence of general serious depletion, if such had occurred. 

 Had the manner of fishing and the amount of fishing gear employed 

 remained relatively constant dm-ing this period, most valuable de- 

 ductions could have been drawn. But the amount of gear em- 

 ployed has more than doubled and the fishing grounds have been 

 pushed fartlier and farther into the open bay. Wliat the effect of 

 these changes has been must remain in some degree a matter of spec- 

 ulation. The Ugaguk responded to the more intensive fishing in 

 1911 and the Kvichak-Naknek in 1912, with greatly increased out- 

 puts; and these were maintained at the higher level for seven suc- 

 cessive years, with the single exception of 1915, which was a partial 

 failure on the Kvichak. The Kvichak-Naknek produced in 1912 

 nearly 14,000,000 red salmon, whereas 9,500,000 had been the 

 largest number previously obtained diu-ing any year. Approxi- 

 mately the same number were captured the following year in 1913. 

 From the eggs that were fui-nished in these two years of increased 

 pack there resulted the run of 1917, when the Kvichak-Naknek 

 yielded over 15,500,000 red salmon. The fact that a largely in- 

 creased pack was thus possible, and that it could be maintained 

 without serious interruption into the second cycle, when the effects 



