RACES OF HERRING, SOUTHEASTERN ALASKA 
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parisons between localities. The medians and quartiles are given for each month 
in table 9. Figures 4,5, and 6 give the length distributions for some of the localities. 
In these figures the lengths have been grouped by 3-millimeter categories and smoothed 
once by three’s. The figures and the table reveal at once that the herring from 4 
Figure 4. — Percentage length distributions, grouped by 3-millimeter categories and smoothed once by three’s for herring of 1926 
year class caught in 1929 (their fourth summer). 
localities: The Noyes Island area (including Culebra Island and Port Estrella), the 
Douglas Island-Icy Strait area, Affleck Canal (Kell Bay) and Peril Strait (Todd) 
are all much slower growing than those of the other localities. These differences 
are so great that we have considered these 4 localities to represent groups of fish 
separate from the neighboring stocks or populations. The Peril Strait herring appear 
to be the slowest growing of any we have so far encountered in Alaska, the median 
of the 4-year-olds taken in June 1930 being only 176.0 millimeters. 
