BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
286 
“belly fat” or ister (fat stored in the body cavity among the entrails), but the herring 
above 225 millimeters in body length in the same samples contained very" little fat 
and were rather thin. In the female gonads from one to half a dozen ripe eggs were 
often found, and the male gonads had blood clots. Both the female and the male 
gonads were flabby. All of these facts tend to show that it was probably not long 
since they had spawned. 
The data for Elrington Passage for 1927 are shown as two separate curves. The 
first of these curves, from June 16 to 21, 1927, was taken on the average about 10 days 
Figure 31.— Condition factor for herring in Kaehemak Bay 
earlier than the 1926 curve; while the second curve, from June 28 to July 6, 1927, was 
taken about 3 days later than the 1926 curve. Both of the 1927 curves are consider- 
ably above the 1926 curve. 
The same superior condition of the 1927 samples is shown elsewhere in Prince 
William Sound. In Eshamy Bay, from September 12 to 20, 1926, the herring were all 
rather thin with only a trace of ister; a few, especially the larger ones, were too thin 
to salt. No heri'ing were caught in Eshamy Bay in 1927, but we have samples from 
McClure Bay. The two localities are onty 12 miles apart, so they can be compared 
for the two years. The McClure Bay samples were taken from September 29 to 
October 3, 1927, an average of two weeks later than the Eshamy Bay samples of 1926, 
