OTHER FISHERIES. 



COD. 



The cod fishery of Alaska is growing steadily from year to year, 

 the only apparent limit to its development being a market for 

 the product. All of the firms operating in the district have their 

 headquarters at San Francisco, Cal., or Seattle, Anacortes, or 

 Tacoma, Wash., at which places or in their immediate vicinity the 

 kench-cured fish are received and prepared for marketing. The 

 greater part of the product is sold in the United States, a considerable 

 quantity being marketed in New England. The rest is sent to Porto 

 Rico and other "West Indian islands, and to Central America, the 

 Hawaiian Islands, Australia, Cliina, Japan, and other countries in 

 the East. The industry was badly demoralized during the greater 

 part of 1906, owing to the bitter rate-cutting war between certain of 

 the San Francisco dealers, which forced prices down to such a point 

 that but little, if any, profit was left. The war did not extend to the 

 export trade, however, and this was consequently the more active. 



The fishery is conducted in two ways. One is the establishment, 

 near the banks, of shore stations, where the catch is collected daily by 

 means of small boats, and whence from time to time, as sufficient 

 quantity has accumulated, it is shipped to market in vessels dis- 

 patched from the coast ports specially for the purpose. Under the 

 other plan vessels sail from Puget Sound ports and San Francisco 

 direct to the banks and return thence to the home port with the 

 catch. This branch of the fishery can not be credited to Alaska, 

 however, and therefore does not appear in the tables (p. 8-11) in tliis 

 report. 



FISHING STATIONS. 



The most important fishery and the one wliich figures in the sta- 

 tistical data of tliis report is that prosecuted from the shore stations. 

 Following the establishment of the first permanent station, in 1867, 

 the business fiuctuated from year to year with the varying profita- 

 bleness of shore and vessel fisliing. For several years past, however, 

 the stations have evidently been the more remunerative, as their 

 number has considerably increased. The following were in opera- 

 tion in 1906: 



45 



