SALMON-TAGGING EXPERIMENTS 
23 
Table 17 . — Returns from 462 red salmon tagged at Nicholaski Spit, Alaska Peninsula, July 11, 12, 
and 17, 1928 
It will be seen at once that the most important migration is to the westward 
and particularly into the region of Ikatan and Morzhovoi Bays. Approximately 
one-fourth of the recaptured tags came from these two localities. The movement 
from Nicholaski Spit to Ikatan and Morzhovoi Bays was very prompt — from four 
to five days — and in this respect the migration resembles that of the Bristol Bay 
fish that pass from the Shumagin Islands to Ikatan and Morzhovoi Bays. (See 
Gilbert, 1923, and Gilbert and Rich, 1925.) These facts lend strong support to the 
theory that many of the red salmon that pass Nicholaski Spit belong to the same 
schools that provide the fishery in the Shumagin Islands, and the single return from 
Bristol Bay is conclusive evidence that at least some of these fish were bound for the 
streams in that district. It is not surprising that more fish were not taken in Bristol 
Bay, because the red-salmon fishery there closed on July 23 — only 12 days after 
the first fish were tagged at Nicholaski Spit. 
Although the evidence points conclusively to the Bristol Bay origin of a large 
percentage of the Nicholaski Spit fish, there is also a surprisingly large migration 
to the eastward, fish being taken at Chignik, Kodiak Island, and Cook Inlet. The 
earlier experiments in the Alaska Peninsula region had given no indication of any 
such extensive migration to the east. Most of these earlier experiments were con- 
ducted earlier in the season, however, and so were not directly comparable. Some 
of the later experiments in 1923, however, did show a distinct tendency toward an 
easterly migration, although by no means as well marked as in the case of the experi- 
ments of 1928, in which more than 25 per cent of the returns came from Chignik, 
Kodiak, and Cook Inlet. There is obviously some indication here that the fishery 
in the Ikatan-Shumagin Island district does draw to a considerable extent, at least 
after about the 10th of July, upon the runs originating in streams, such as Chignik, 
situated to the eastward. 
