PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND, COPPER AND BERING RIVER SALMON STATISTICS 237 
and smaller runs on the odd years, a phenomenon which has been observed repeatedly 
in other districts. Another fact of interest is that in 1921 the smallest catch of record 
in the sound was made, but it was not indicative of the size of the run in that year as 
no effort was made to take pinks owing to the depressed condition of the market from 
which recovery was only partial in 1922 and 1923. Disregarding these three years, 
the graph shows a strong upward trend of the fishery throughout the period 1915 
to 1927, both good and lean years becoming steadily better. Even the odd year of 
1927 was better by several hundred thousand salmon than any of the even years 
except 1924 and 1926. This increase in the catches of pinks in the odd year was quite 
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Figure 8.— Catch of pink salmon in Prince William Sound 
general over a large part of Prince William Sound and in other districts to the west- 
ward as noted in Part II of this review. The increase in the catch in 1927 was un- 
questionably due to an increase in the actual abundance of fish and was thus due to 
biological rather than economic causes. Just what these causes were is unknown but 
it was suggested in Part II that they may have been associated with the unusually 
mild winter of 1925-26. 
The coho salmon fisheries of Prince William Sound were possibly the first to be 
exploited, dating back to 1893, when development of the Copper River fisheries was 
begun. In the records from 1893 to 1900 (see table 10), it seems very probable that 
the reported catches of cohos in some years were composed largely of pinks. This sup- 
position rests primarity upon the fact that from 1901 to 1909, a period of 9 years, no 
