THE FRASER RIVER SALMON SITUATION. 



explorers record it, and quote the Indians as saying it had always 

 existed. It has been a characteristic peculiar to the Fraser and 

 unknown in any other river: Up to 1917 the Fraser River District 

 produced more sockeye every fourth year than the combined catches 

 made in Alaskan waters during all but one of those years, as the 

 following statement shows : 



THE SOCKEYE-SALMON PACK OF THE FRASER RlVER SYSTEM AND IN 



ALASKA. 



(5.) The sockeye-salmon runs to the Fraser River system in the big 

 years has been alarmingly depleted, and the runs in the small years 

 are no longer of commercial importance. Both are threatened with 

 extinction. 



Complete records exist of conditions on both the fishing and the 

 spawning grounds of the Fraser system since 1900. The record of 

 the pack shows the catch, because the entire catch is marketed in tins. 

 The number of fishermen employed and the amount of gear used are 

 also recorded. There are adequate data also for a comparison of 

 conditions on the spawning-beds since 1900. Dr. Gilbert, in " The 

 Sockeye Run on the Fraser River,"* says : " No other sockeye-stream 

 has received such close and discriminating study. Annual inspection 

 has been made of the spawning-beds of the entire watershed, and 

 predictions of the run four years hence have been fearlessly made. 

 It is a matter of record how consistently these prophesies have been 

 fulfilled." The observations of conditions on the spawning-beds have 

 been made by the same observer since 1900. 



The records for the fishing-grounds show that the runs of sockeye 

 to the Fraser River system in the big years 1901, 1905, 1909, and 

 1913 produced an average pack of 1,927,602 cases, and that in 1917, 

 the last year in the cycle of big years, it produced a pack of but 

 559,732 cases, or 70 per cent, less than the average of the four 

 preceding big years. The startling decrease in 1917 is due to the fact 

 that the great spawning runs of 1913 did not reach the spawning-beds 



* British Columbia Fisheries Report, 1917. 



