112 American Fisheries Society 



the young would return to these regions the following 

 year, and when large enough, would swim out into the 

 channel and become the legitimate market fishes of the 

 country. The peculiar methods of the market men of 

 Southern California were absolutely fatal to the carry- 

 ing out of a hypothesis of this kind, as they would fol- 

 low up schools of fishes, surround them with great purse- 

 nets, during the day time, taking from five to ten tons 

 at a haul, of spawning sardines, or the larger fish; as 

 this was carried on every day and every hour in the day, 

 whenever the fish could be found, it was absolutely fatal 

 to any method of protection. Not only this, every night 

 the Japanese fishermen would come in flocks to the island 

 and set their nets, generally in the form of gill-nets or 

 seines, fastening them to the shore or kelp, and run them 

 out from one hundred to a thousand feet into the ocean. 

 A report made to the writer from San Clemente Island 

 showed that there were fifty of these set-nets set in less 

 than a mile and a half on the east shore of this island in 

 one night. Besides this, there were other methods of tak- 

 ing the fish. 



This was kept up day and night, in season and out, for 

 about fifteen years, and the end soon came to some of the 

 largest and most valuable of the fishes. Among these I 

 would mention the leaping tuna. Fifteen years ago this 

 fish was found in such vast numbers, within three miles 

 of Santa Catalina Island, that it became a valuable and 

 important source of income to hundreds of people and 

 bid fair to become one of the great economic fishes of the 

 State of California, and as valuable as the great tunny 

 fisheries which have been carried on in the Mediterranean 

 sea from the earliest historical times. The leaping tuna 

 in California had a peculiar habit of coming inshore to 

 feed at night or late in the afternoon, and I believe they 

 spawned within the five-mile limit at Santa Catalina. In 

 any event, these miles and miles of nets extending out 

 into the ocean into their natural feeding ground where 

 they pursued the flying fish, stopped them, just as in- 

 numerable hurdles would stop any animal, and had such 





