PACIFIC HERRING 
233 
LOCALIZATION OF BRANCHES OF INDUSTRY 
In Alaska herring are utilized mainly in four ways: For oil and fertilizer or 
fish, meal, for pickling, for halibut bait, and for dry-salting, and the requirements 
vary accordingly. It is found that particular localities are favored for each of these 
phases of the herring industry. 
The oil and fertilizer industry requires a fairly constant and cheap supply of 
fat herring. Cheapness implies that they are too small to be used for pickling, 
necessitating that small herring be more abundant at times than large herring for 
the industry to be profitable. 
The pickled (or salted) herring industry utilizes, as a rule, only herring of over 
lOM inches in total length. The herring must be fat and are much better if free 
from feed, as it causes the pack to spoil. 
For halibut bait the herring are best in the winter and spring months, when 
they are thin and firm, as they stay on the hooks longer and keep much fresher than 
when fat. Medium sized or small herring are preferred. 
For dry-salting the herring are best in the late fall and winter months, as they 
must be free from feed or fat, and should have the milt and roe developed. The 
size makes but little difference as long as they are mature fish. 
The oil and fish-meal industry centers in Chatham Strait and is found to some 
extent in Prince William Sound, but is entirely lacking farther west. This dis- 
tribution results from the large, fairly constant supply of small fat herring in Chatham 
Strait from June to October, and the predominance of small herring in Prince 
William Sound in the early summer. In southeastern Alaska the small herring so 
predominate as to make pickling unprofitable except as an adjunct to the oil and 
fish-meal industry. In Prince William Sound the schools of herring are so mixed 
in size that it is necessary for the plants to maintain reduction works to utilize the 
enormous waste, yet the supply has not been large enough to encourage the man- 
ufacture of oil and fish meal as an independent industry. All of the larger estab- 
lishments in this district operate reduction plants in conjunction with their salteries. 
Farther west than Prince William Sound most of the herring are large enough for 
pickling, leaving only a small residue for reduction, while the plants are practically 
all either floating salteries or very small shore plants, with no room for the opera- 
tion of fertilizer plants. For these various reasons no reduction plants have been 
operated west of Prince William Sound. 
The pickled (or salted) herring industry is of greatest importance in western 
Alaska and the Kodiak- Afognak and Cook Inlet districts, owing to the large herring 
obtained in these areas. In Prince William Sound it is of about equal or of slightly 
greater importance than the reduction industry, but is a minor industry in south- 
eastern Alaska. 
The bait industry centers in southeastern Alaska, for it is here that the halibut 
boats land most of their catches. During the summer months the halibut vessels 
obtain fresh bait from the herring plants, but in the spring and fall months, when the 
herring plants are not operating, the supplying of fresh bait to the halibut fleet is a 
separate industry. A supply of bait is frozen during these months, when the herring 
are thin, and sold to the boats during periods when fresh bait is unobtainable. 
At present the dry-salting of herring is of very minor importance, being carried 
on only in Cook Inlet in the late fall and early winter months. 
