THIRTY-FIRST BIENNIAL REPORT 117 



The fact remains that our salmon are still without adequate protec- 

 tion. The salmon supply in the state has been reduced to a point where 

 there is little profit for fishermen to fish for them, or for dealers to 

 maintain stations to receive them. Must we wait until there is no profit 

 for anyone and the opposition vanishes before anything is done? If 

 our salmon runs are permitted to fade away to that stage, it is doubtful 

 if they can ever be built up again. 



INTERNATIONAL PACIFIC SALMON FEDERATION 



In 1925 the fisheries officials of the United States and Canadian gov- 

 ernments, together with the fisheries officials of the three Pacific coast 

 states, British Columbia and Alaska, met at Seattle and formed an 

 organization known as the International Pacific Salmon Federation. 

 California, the United States and Canada had been working independ- 

 ently on salmon investigations, and it was for the purpose of coordi- 

 nating these activities and to provide a means of mutual discussion of 

 salmon problems of interest to all that the organization was formed. 

 Meetings were to be held yearly. At the first two meetings, the subject 

 of salmon trolling was discussed at length. All but the Canadian 

 officials agreed that trolling should be stopped. The officials of Canada 

 contended that, in trolling off the British Columbia coast, their fisher- 

 men catch very few immature salmon, and they believed that the salmon 

 they were catching were from British Columbia streams. 



To determine this point, extensive tagging of troll-caught fish was 

 planned and carried out by British Columbia and the three western 

 states. British Columbia was much more successful in its tagging 

 operations than the three states, and is still carrying on this work. 

 The three states were so unsuccessful that they have abandoned the 

 work, preferring to mark young salmon at the hatcheries and trust to 

 recovering them later from the trollers. The tagging experiment dis- 

 closed the fact that many of the salmon caught by trolling off Van- 

 couver Island are from the Columbia River. In spite of this finding, 

 the Canadian officials do not favor any great restriction on their trolling 

 and they do not care to enter into discussions of controlling trolling 

 through international treaty. We can but agree with their point of 

 view, for they have been trying for nearly twenty years to enter into a 

 treaty with the United States to protect the depleted salmon runs in 

 Puget Sound and the Fraser River. In the Fraser River controversy, 

 the United States has been getting most of the fish, while British 

 Columbia has all the expense of artificial propagation on the Fraser 

 River. The Canadians express a willingness to discuss the restriction 

 of trolling after the Fraser River salmon treaty is entered into. 



The program for salmon investigations as adopted hy the federation, 

 in brief outline, is as follows : Collection of adequate and uniform sta- 

 tistics; tagging experiments; scale analyses of the adult salmon; study 

 of the adult returns from known escapements to the spawning grounds ; 

 stream surveys of the spawning grounds; study of the production of 

 seaward migrants from known escapements of parent fish; efficiency 

 of various methods of artificial propagation as compared with natural 

 propagation ; effect of transplantation ; improvement of spawning 

 areas and overcoming of obstacles, natural and artificial, to the ascent 

 of spawning salmon and to the descent of the seaward migrants ; the life 



