FISHERIES OF WASHINGTON AND BRITISH COLUMBIA. 323 



that it has anywhere been detrimeutal to the fishing interests, and in 

 view of the sparsely settled condition of the coast in the vicinity of 

 nearly all the canneries there seems to be little occasion for concern 

 from a sanitary standpoint. The number of canneries must also for 

 some time remain too few to make the disposition of their refuse a 

 question to be handled by other than the local authorities. 



On the Fraser River the matter is more serious, as nearly all the 

 canneries are located within a distance of 6 to 8 miles of the mouth of 

 the river; yet even here there is no evidence that the offal has bad any 

 deleterious effect upon the run of salmon. That injury of tliat character 

 is scarcely to be expected from this cause is indicated, moreover, by the 

 still worse conditions produced each season about and immediately 

 below the spawning-grounds by the floating masses of dead and decay- 

 ing fishes through which the fresh arrivals continue their ascent, in no 

 way checked by the foulness of the water. The pollution in those 

 places is strikingly in evidence, while in the region of the canneries 

 there is generally little to be seen. The large volume of water in the 

 lower part of the river, combined with the strong current and low 

 temperature, tends to dissipate the offal, which mainly disappears as 

 completely as in the sea. It is a common local belief that much of it 

 is consumed by the small fishes which are reported to swarm about the 

 cannery sites, but it is doubtful if they exert any appreciable influence 

 in disposing of this immense amount of refuse. Sometimes, it is said, 

 the offal is stirred up by the eddies so as to become caught in the drift 

 nets when they are fished in shallow water, but such occurrences are 

 evidently quite infrequent. 



From a sanitary point of view, however, the offal has proved a nuisance 

 in some localities. This is not so at New Westminster, where no trou- 

 ble from this source has been reported. The uppermost point at which 

 complaint was made is Ladner, and the conditions are also often bad 

 in the neighborhood of Steveston. In this region the offal is sometimes 

 stranded by the current or retained by the eddies, so that when the 

 tide is out it may become exposed on the bars and in places along the 

 banks, emitting an exceedingly offensive odor. It is also drifted into 

 some of the sloughs, and may thus be carried some distance inland, 

 greatly to the annoyance of the farmers, who have often to depend upon 

 the water from these places for domestic use. The local authorities at 

 Ladner have been making strenuous efforts to abate the nuisance on the 

 score of injury to the public health, but at last accounts they had not 

 been entirely successful. 



Several expedients have been tried to obviate the trouble caused by 

 the cannery refuse, but all have ended without definite result. The 

 Canadian law forbids throwing it into the river, but as the enforcement 

 of the regulation under existing circumstances seems to work injustice 

 to the canneries, its operation has generally been suspended, with the 

 exi)ectation that some advantageous method of disposing of the offal 



