CALIFORNIA FISH AND GAME 69 



Needed repairs to hatcheries, new roads, new brood ponds, new 

 fences, receiving and aging tanks, all badly needed in the hatcheries, 

 will thus be provided under the program. On the game farms and 

 game refuges necessary improvements will be speeded. 



This Federal aid will help enlarge the Friant small-mouthed black 

 bass experimental ponds where more tanks will be added. At Mount 

 Shasta, Forest Home, Burney Creek, Fall Creek, Basin Creek and 

 Brookdale the work will enable hatcheries situated in these localities 

 to increase their output of trout. 



Work contemplated on the game farms at Yountville and Chine 

 will enable them to produce more game birds. 



Each project will have a supervisor in charge, selected from the 

 locality in which the project is located. — 0. L. Warner, Division of 

 Fish and Game, San Francisco, December 21, 1933. 



COMMERCIAL FISHERY NOTES 



SARDINES 



During September a general strike of all northern (Monterey and 

 San Francisco) sardine fishermen occurred. The fishermen claimed 

 that under the existing price of $6 a ton it was impossible to make a 

 living, so they struck for $8 a ton. Dissatisfaction of many of the 

 fishermen fishing for the outside floating reduction plants was made 

 known, they claiming that short weights were being given them by the 

 outside plants. After many conferences between canners and fisher- 

 men, and after the N. R. A. board. State Labor Commissioner, and 

 finally T. A. Reardon, State Director of Industrial Relations, M^ere 

 called upon to mediate the claims, the strike was settled on October 20, 

 with a price of $7 per ton, after the Director of Industrial Relations 

 had been selected as arbitrator. 



Several new canning and reduction plants are planning to operate 

 this season in the northern half of the State. The Bayside Fish Flour 

 Co. has commenced operating its new plant at Point Richmond. A 

 new plant at Pittsburg, the Pittsburg Canners, Inc., has installed 

 machinery in a bean warehouse on New York Slough and started opera- 

 tions. The Benicia Canning Co. has thought of operating as a sardine 

 cannery but to date has taken no fish. 



For the first three months of the season (August, September and 

 October), 52,377 tons of sardines have been delivered; 227,650 cases 

 of 1-lb. ovals and 37,440 cases of other sized cans have been packed, 

 as compared with 41,349 tons received, 81,328 cases of 1-lb. ovals and 

 1872 cases of other sized cans for the same period last year (1932). 



SARDINE ABUNDANCE 



True to the predictions made the early part of the sardine season 

 by the California State Fisheries Laboratory, sardines in Monterey 

 Bay and off of San Francisco have been relatively scarcer than in the 

 fall of 1932. Knowledge of the sardine population, gained through 

 continual study and sampling of the catch, was the basis for this pre- 

 diction. No new abundant year class has entered the sardine fishery 

 in three years. As a consequence, the sardine fishery has been sup- 

 ported in the fall by the existing older year groups. Naturally, the 



