34 FISHERIES OF ALASKA IN 1910. 



to narrow the limits between which this rate is indicated to lie. 

 From such a slender basis of facts as are available, a rate of increase 

 of from 200 per cent to 250 per cent is to be inferred if there is neither 

 under nor overfishing. If these figures are too high the Nushagak 

 industry is overfishing. If they are too low, fish are being use- 

 lessly wasted to the spawning grounds. The latter of these alter- 

 natives would hardly be maintained by anyone, and can hardly hold 

 over a course of years, yet it may possibly be true of an occasional 

 season, such as that of 1908. 



Value of a census of salmon runs. — If the establishment of the 

 increment percentage, rate of increase, or measure of the tendency of 

 red salmon to multiply by their own natural and unaided reproduc- 

 tive powers is of any importance to the fisheries, then the Wood River 

 investigations or their counterpart ought to be continued and made to 

 include a complete salmon catchment basin, the larger and more 

 isolated the better. It can hardly be maintained that the factors of 

 temperature, wind, chance, etc., affect so erratically the movements 

 of the great schools that the annual run to a given basin is little or not 

 at all related to the preceding spawning runs which escaped capture 

 therein. Salmon of course do not all return to the region where they 

 were hatched. Some go elsewhere and a continuous flux or ebb and 

 flow of interchange results. 



But the number of the spawners inevitably measures the rcproduc- 

 tivity. If this number could be ascertained for all Alaska, it would 

 soon be known how prolific the salmon are. Since this is impossible 

 it remains to make the determination on as large a section of the 

 spawning grounds as can be handled. A somewhat longer time is 

 required in order that the annual variations affecting the particular 

 fragment of the fishery under observation shall reach an average 

 making it representative of the whole. It matters little whether the 

 adult salmon return to their parent waters, or whether they inter- 

 change freely, even to the extent of none returning to their birth- 

 places. The essential point is to determine how large are the runs 

 which succeed year after year to a series of known spawning escapes. 



As a matter of fact, there is much difference of opinion among 

 fishermen respecting the controlling effect of winds on the movements 

 of salmon. In Bering Sea few days pass without strong blows, and 

 it is easy to relate the suddenly arriving salmon run to some par- 

 ticular wind, just as the so-called equinoctial storm is supposed to 

 have some essential connection with the autumnal equinox. But 

 whatever resultant physical influences have, they do not prevent an 

 unfailing annual rush of hordes of red salmon into Nushagak Bay, 

 their advent predictable almost to the day and their numbers expected 

 with perfect certainty to be measured in millions. During the count- 

 less years in which this has occurred before the commercial fishery 



