EXPERIMENT IN TAGGING ADULT RED SALMON, ALASKA 
PENINSULA FISHERIES RESERVATION, SUMMER OF 1922. 
By CHARLES H. GILBERT, 
Special assistant, U. S. Bureau of Fisheries. 
Important fisheries conducted within the Alaska Peninsula Fisheries Reserva- 
tion are dependent on runs of the red or sockeye salmon, the destination and 
spawning grounds of which have been undeter min ed. These rims are known to 
consist of mature fish that would spawn and die during the season in which they 
are captured, but the place of capture is not in close proximity to spawning grounds 
of sufficient importance, obviously, to account for the extensive runs in question, 
and no information has been hitherto available to connect them with more distant 
spawning grounds, toward which they are headed. It was for the purpose of 
throwing light on this important question that the tagging operations of the summer 
of 1922 were undertaken. 
From the standpoint of conservation the final destination of a salmon rim and 
the course it pursues in its final streamward migration are questions of prime 
importance. Not until the fish have approached the mouth of their spawning 
stream are they protected by law from capture. Along their migration routes in 
the sea they are subject to attack wherever they may mass themselves in sufficient 
numbers in close proximity to the coast. Should this repeatedly occur along a 
migration route that is annually traveled, a run of salmon may become decimated 
and eventually destroyed, even though the individual fisheries of which it repeatedly 
forms the subject are prosecuted in the usual manner and not with extraordinary 
severity. 
To insure the adequate protection of a salmon run a spawning escapement 
that will bear a definite ratio to the total size of the run must be provided for. To 
make such provision we must first know the total number captured for commercial 
purposes and then the number that escape up the river to the spawning grounds. 
Obviously these facts can not be known unless the migration routes are established 
and the points at which salmon bound for the different streams are forced to con- 
tribute to the commercial fisheries. The more numerous the points of attack the 
greater the restrictions that will be necessary to save the rims from extinction. 
The principal red salmon fisheries on the southern side of the Alaska Peninsula 
are those of Ike tan and Morzhovoi Bays, near the western extremity of the Penin- 
sula, and those on Unga Island in the Shumagin Group, approximately 100 miles 
to the eastward. Problems of the kind above indicated have arisen regarding the 
