ACCLIMATIZATION OF FISH IN THE PACIFIC STATES. 
409 
About 1881 or 1882 shad became distributed along the Washington coast, and are 
now regularly found in all the coast bays and rivers. They appear to have reached 
Puget Sound in 1882. Mr. .James G. Swan, of Port Townsend, communicated to the 
Fish Commission the information that on August 26, 1882, Mr. G. M. Haller, of Seattle, 
took a shad in Puget Sound m a gill net; the fish tvas small. Since that time shad 
have increased in size and numbers and are now regularly taken in Puget Sound and 
its tributaries, although not abundantly. 
In 1891 shad reached the Fraser River in British Columbia, and in the same year 
they were reported from the Stikine River, near Wrangell Island, Alaska. 
But meager reports have been received of the outcome of plauts of shad fry in 
Utah and Idaho. No evidence of the survival and growth of those placed in the 
Jordan River has been met with, excepting an unverified statement that in 1876 a 
shad 3 inches long was taken in that river with a hook and line (see Report Deseret 
Agricultural and Manufacturing Society for 1875); there is no certainty of the proper 
identification of the specimen. 
In November, 1888, Mr. M. P. Madsen, of Lake View, caught a 6-inch shad in the 
southern part of Utah Lake, about 15 miles south of the point where plants were made 
in the preceding June. Mr. Madsen reported the capture of another specimen in the 
same vicinity and of two others on the western side of the lake.* Under date of 
October, 21, 1889, Mr. A. M. Musser, fish commissioner of Utah, stated that another 
shad in fine condition had been taken in Utah Lake; its length was 13 inches and 
its weight 1 pound. 
The following resume of the results of the efforts to acclimatize shad on the 
west coast was given by the United States Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries in his 
report for 1887. Speaking of the fry deposited in the Sacramento River between 1871 
and 1880, he says : 
From these slender colonies, aggregating less than 1 per cent of the number now annually planted 
in our Atlantic Slope rivers, the shad have multiplied and distributed themselves along 2,000 miles of 
coast from the Golden Gate of California to Vancouver Island, in British Columbia. They are 
abundant in some of the rivers, common in most qf them, and occasional ones may be found everywhere 
in the estuaries and bays of this long coast line. Prior to our experiments on the west coast it was a 
dictum of fish-culture that fish planted in a river would return to it when mature for the purpose of 
spawning. The result of these experiments has been to demonstrate that this instinct of nativity, 
should it really exist, is in this case dominated by other influences, which have dispersed the shad 
planted in the Sacramento widely beyond the limits which we had assigned to them and in the most 
unexpected direction. 
The cause is probably to be sought in the genial influences of the Japan current, which brings the 
warmth of equatorial Asia to temper the extremes of Arctic climate on the southern shore of the 
Alaskan Peninsula, and, thence sweeping to the south, carries tropical heats to the latitude of San 
Francisco. Repelled on the one hand by the low temperature of the great rivers and fringe of coast 
waters, and solicited on the other by the equable and higher temperature of the Japan current, the 
shad have become true nomads, and have broken the bounds of the hydrographic area to which we 
had supposed they would be restricted. Following the track of the Asiatic current and finding more 
congenial temperature as they progress, it is not unreasonable to expect that some colonies will 
eventually reach the coast of Asia and establish themselves in its great rivers. 
INFLUENCE OF NEW ENVIRONMENT ON HABITS OF SHAD. 
The changes which have been wrought in the habits of the shad as the result of 
their introduction into new waters are extremely interesting and important from both 
biological and economic standpoints. In the absence of a special scientific inquiry, 
Deseret Evening News, Nov. 30, 1888. 
