30 FISH CULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 
This number was taken in two hours. From the New York Z7mes 
of July 15th, 1879, | extract a sentence by William S. Dodge, 
formerly Mayor of Sitka, to the effect that: ‘“ At Kodiak, Henry 
Richard and Thomas Bache, fishermen, caught alone, with hook 
and line, within the last six months, 22,000 cod.” 
Captain Andrew Anderson told meat St. Paul, that witha crew 
of ten men, on Seminoffsky Bank, he has caught as many as 4,000 
in a day, and that his average catch there was from 1,600 to 1,800 
daily. Mr. D. C. Bowen stated that John McCathrine and a man 
named Smith, caught 1,700 cod in a day on one trawl (a 12-line 
trawl of 600 or 700 hooks) in Unga Straits. Their average catch 
was 1,200 fish. A correspondent of the San Francisco Post, 
writing of the season of 1876, says: “One man on board the 
schooner Selma, which arrived the other day, had 13,000 fish to 
his credit,” etc. These were caught during a season of four 
months. Captain J. C. Caton, who has been familiar with the 
Shumagin fishery ever since the second year of its existence, 
affirms that fish are plenty enough to supply a large market when 
that is found. The evidence of all the fishermen goes to prove 
that the great want is not fish, but demand for fish. One such 
customer as Gloucester would whiten the Gulf of Alaska with 
hundreds of sails where now there are less than a dozen, and 
there is every indication that full fare will repay the venture. 
As to the influence of fishing and its accompanying practices, 
we have information from only two points—St. Paul, Kodiak 
and Pirate Cove, Shumagin. Capt. H. R. Bowen, of the former 
place, says that cod are as abundant there now as they were when 
white man began fishing ; that their haunts and habits have not 
been changed by the influence of man, and their numbers have not 
been diminished by over-fishing. _Trawls have never been used 
in that vicinity. He regards the practice of throwing 
gurry overboard as injurious to the fishery; the cod, he 
says, will leave and their place be taken by sculpins. 
Mr. Thomas Devine, of Pirate Cove, said that cod are scarcer 
there now than they were five years ago. He accounts for their 
decrease by the increased fishing, the injurious effects of trawling 
and of throwing overboard gurry from the vessels, and to some 
