PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND, COPPER AND BERING RIVER SALMON STATISTICS 233 
TOTAL, EASTERN PART 
The statistical history of the eastern part of Prince William Sound, taken as a 
whole, goes back much farther than the history of any one of its minor localities; 
but the early figures can not be taken without reservation as the catches of the sound 
and of the Copper River were inextricably mixed in the records. Moser’s reports of 
1899 and 1902 and the various reports of the Treasury agents give data on these 
fisheries back as far as 1889. The chief fishery in those days was for the red salmon 
of the Copper River; but the canneries were located on the eastern edge of Prince 
William Sound, after the first three or four years, and it is quite apparent from an 
examination of the data that allocation of catches as between the two districts was 
by no means accurately made. The data are otherwise confused also as, for instance, 
in the Treasury report on the salmon fisheries in Alaska for 1896, Tingle gives sta- 
tistics of the salmon pack for only one of the two canneries that were operating in 
the sound in that year. In these he gives the catch of cohos as 219,073, a figure 
which is quite beyond belief and is, furthermore, exactly the sum of the catches of 
pinks and cohos as given by Moser (1899, p. 30) for the same company mentioned 
by Tingle (the Pacific Packing Co.). It seems quite certain, therefore, that Tingle’s 
figure for the coho catch is in error. Moser’s figures are undoubtedly much better 
but are given in detail for only two years so that it is impossible to determine what 
the catches by species actually were for the period previous to 1904 when the collec- 
tion of data was begun by the Bureau of Fisheries. In view of these conditions it 
has seemed best not to attempt any arbitrary allocation but to give the data as they 
stand in the old records in a separate table. Because the more important elements 
of the catch in those days derived from the Copper River, the table will be found in 
the section dealing with the fisheries of that district. In compiling this table Moser’s 
figures have been used for the years 1896 and 1897 and those given in the Treasury 
reports for the other years. Although there is no way in which the recorded catches 
can be accurately allocated, it is probable that the pinks were secured mainly in the 
eastern part of the sound and that some, at least, of the cohos (if indeed the fish 
recorded as cohos were actually of this species) came also from this district. Some 
of the red salmon were doubtless taken in the western part of the sound. 
The table shows clearly that this section of the sound, from 1904 to 1914, inclu- 
sive, produced little else than pink salmon and that the largest catch of this species, 
573,967, was made in 1904. It also shows that no salmon were caught in this region 
in 1905, 1906, and 1909 due in all probability to the allocation of catches in those 
years to the streams of the Copper River delta. During much of this period the 
field was fished by a single cannery at Orca; and the fishing effort remained almost 
constant, to which fact is undoubtedly due the rather uniform catch for many years. 
The fisheries of the eastern part of Prince William Sound since 1910 are shown 
graphically in Table 9. In 1916, the intensity of fishing changed abruptly with the 
establishment of more canneries, and the catch of all species of salmon except kings 
surpassed all previous records — five times more pinks being taken than ever before. 
Chums and reds, previously taken in small numbers, showed an even higher ratio of 
increase. The subsequent years, 1921 alone excepted, produced generally much 
larger catches of all species but there appears to be no indication of any material 
change or prospect of change in abundance in the near future. Some localities, as 
has been shown above, show reduced catches, but these are more than counter- 
balanced by increased catches in other places. It must be borne in mind, of course, 
