Babcock. — The Great Fraser River Fishery 233 



Juan de Fuca, Rosario, and Haro Straits, and the other Ameri- 

 can estuary waters leading into the Gulf of Georgia, and the 

 waters of that gulf as well as the channels of the Fraser River 

 up to Mission Bridge, in British Columbia. 



Fishing for sockeyes began commercially in the channels 

 of the Fraser in British Columbia in 1876. It was extended 

 to the waters of the Gulf of Georgia immediately outside the 

 mouths of the river in 1890. Fishing for sockeyes began 

 in Washington waters in 1891 with the installation of traps 

 in the vicinity of Point Roberts. Traps became an important 

 factor in 1897. Purse-nets came into use in American waters 

 in 1901 and in recent years have greatly increased in number. 

 During the period from 1900 to 1918, when the industry 

 was at its height, the catch of sockeyes in Canadian waters 

 produced a pack of 5,030,730 cases. During the same period 

 the catch in American waters gave a pack of 7,382,343 cases. 

 This represents a combined total pack of 12,413,073 cases, of 

 which the Canadians produced 40 per cent and the Americans 

 60 per cent. 



Dr. C. H. Gilbert, of Stanford University, in his "Con- 

 tributions to the Life-history of the Sockeye Salmon,"* has 

 demonstrated by scale-reading that the sockeyes that run in the 

 Fraser River system are hatched in the watershed of that 

 river in British Columbia, live for the first year or more of 

 their lives in its lake waters, then migrate to the sea, where 

 they remain and grow until the summer of their fourth year, 

 and then seek to return to the Fraser River basin in order to 

 spawn, and after spawning die.f 



The Fraser River basin formerly produced more sockeye 

 salmon every fourth year, known as the "big year," than any 

 other known river-basin, and in the following years, known as 

 the "small years," produced runs of commercial importance. 



* See British Columbia Fisheries Reports, 1913 to 191 8. 



t There are however, exceptional cases in which fish proceed to sea immediately 

 on hatching; and there are certain proportions which return in their third and fifth 

 years. 



