388 American Fisheries Society 



Perhaps the outstanding fact in connection with all of these 

 studies is the demonstration that the destruction of the salmon 

 is proceeding with tremendous rapidity, and the danger of its 

 extermination or of the reduction of numbers to a point which 

 will threaten a great industry is a consideration, not of some 

 time many years hence, but of the immediate future. 



There has also come out of these studies a firm conviction 

 that joint action on the part of the two governments and their 

 workers is essential for the solution of the problem and the 

 protection of the industry. I think it must be equally clear 

 to all that to provide for joint action there must be thorough 

 understanding on both sides of the boundary. Certainly the 

 first and most fundamental preliminary to such understanding 

 is the demonstration of the essential facts in the situation and 

 their coordination with the practices that are in vogue in such 

 fashion as to indicate the lines of action calculated to protect 

 the species and continue the industry. It is with a view to 

 contributing a little at least to this basis of facts that I present 

 this paper before the Society at this meeting. 



For a number of years I have been privileged to conduct 

 studies of the Pacific salmon during the season of its fresh 

 water migration, and to study the factors in the environment 

 and in the organism which, by their mutual interaction, pro- 

 duce the complex conditions that are described in relating the 

 life history of the species. It has seemed to me that part of 

 the confusion and difference of opinion that has been evi- 

 dent in the past might be due to the efforts to solve the entire 

 problem of the migration in a single investigation. The move- 

 ments of the salmon constitute a remarkable story. At some 

 period in life they desert their feeding grounds in salt water, 

 move towards the estuaries, ascend the streams, fulfill their 

 reproductive function, and perish. The migration is a con- 

 tinuous movement. Whatever the factors that control it may 

 be, they are all united in the fulfillment of the reproductive 

 function. They work without interruption and with striking 

 directness to bring about this consummation. However in 



