268 
FOREST AND STREAM 
March 2, 1912 
Pacific Salmon in Eastern Waters 
By DR. JOHN D. QUACKENBOS, of Columbia University 
F ROAI the day that mediaeval monks, credited 
with the revival of Roman methods of 
pisciculture, planted strange fishes in the 
rivers of Christendom in order to give ^■ariety 
to the fish food enjoined by the church as im¬ 
perative on fast days, civilized people have 
sought at intervals to replenish depleted waters 
with new forms of fish life, or to introduce 
popular game fishes into strange lakes and 
streams for the sake of the sport they might 
afford. The very ocean has interposed no bar¬ 
rier to the enthusiasm of the angler. The black 
bass has been transported to Great Britain and 
Germany, our square-tail and rainbow trout 
have been distributed in European streams; the 
Loch Level! salmonid is now naturalized in the 
rivers of India, and British fario and salmon 
have been successfully carried to the antipodes. 
All over our own land, attempts more or less 
.successful are making to acclimatize desirable 
food and game fisbes in waters to which they 
were not native. Prominent among the fish se¬ 
lected for such purpose is the chinook, quinnat 
or king salmon (Tscimzi'ytscha), the famous fish 
of the Columbia River, known to ichthyologists 
as the OiicorhyncJuts (from two Greek words 
meaning “hook snout,” so-called from the hooked 
appearance of the jaw in shotten males). This 
salmon, one of five related species, ascends the 
rivers of Western North America, and of Asia 
as far south as Kamtchatka in countless thou¬ 
sands to spawning grounds in some instances 
1,000 miles from the sea. It differs objectively 
from the genus Sahiio by the larger number of 
rays in tbe anal fin, si.xteen being tbe rule, never 
fewer than fifteen, while the Atlantic and the 
landlocked salmon have a shorter anal fin with 
nine to twelve rays. The quinnat is of the 
greatest economic importance, being regarded 
from the standpoint of food supply as the most 
valuable fish in the world. The average take 
in the Columbia River is 30,000000 pounds; the 
value of the entire annual catch is estimated at 
$20,000,000. 
Attracted by its wonderful fecundity, as well 
as by its value for food purposes, the students 
of fish life connected with the United States 
Commission have for forty years persisted in 
attempts to naturalize this fish in many waters, 
including the Atlantic coast streams, the Missis¬ 
sippi and the Great Lakes, but until recently with 
negative results. A brief review of the life 
history of the quinnat will throw light on the 
cause of failure. 
Most of the eggs deposited are devoured by 
other fishes; most of the alevins, helpless dur¬ 
ing the six weeks required for the absorption 
of the yolk sac, are swallowed by predatory 
fishes and birds. So we may start with the fry, 
drifting down stream tail first, subsisting on 
floating insects and larvse, and reaching the ocean 
when five months old. Their stay here varies 
from two to four or five years, during which 
they grow with phenomenal rapidity. But of 
the life of this salmon in the sea, practically 
nothing is known. The young are believed to 
*Read at the tenth anniversary dinner of the Canadian 
Camp, New York, Feb. 2G. 
remain near the mouths of the rivers they have 
descended, feeding voraciouslj' as they grow on 
the schools of smelts, silversides, anchovies and 
other dainties of the deep, and it! Alaskan wa ers 
on the herring. At Yes Bay, schools of the latter 
fish herald the approach of the pursuing king 
salmon. 
The size attained during this developmental 
period differs in members of the same brood. 
The largest chinook ever taken weighed 125 
pounds; the average weight is about twenty 
pounds. In order that you may form an idea 
of the countless multitudes that throng the in¬ 
lets, pushing toward the cold pour of entering 
streams, I will repeat a statement Prof, Libby, 
of Princeton, made to me. While studying the 
language used in an Alaskan Indian village, he 
paddled out one spring morning with an old 
chief to see him catch salmon for the settlement. 
The Indian used a sjrear weighted at the head, 
to which was attached a long thong. With no 
salmon in sight to aim at, the fisher merely 
hurled the spear into the air, and as it descended 
and entered the water, it impaled a fish, which 
was promptly hauled in. Prof. Libby then took 
the spear and hurled it at random in different 
directions five times, securing as a result three 
twenty-pound salmon. To use an Eastern hyper- 
bole, the inlets are “stiff with fish.” 
Impelled by their instinct to seek fresh water 
as the organs of reproduction develop, these 
salmon gradually prepare for their up-river 
journey by a considerable stay (thirty to forty 
days) in brackish water, and then stem the cur¬ 
rent at the rate of two to four miles a day to¬ 
ward the spawning grounds many hundreds of 
miles up-stream. But the bridal migration is in 
reality a death march, for in all five species of 
Oucorhynclius. dissolution invariably follows the 
first act of procreation. Both parents die, 
whether the hymeneal bed be 1,000 miles or 
1,000 yards from tbe ocean. The day of their 
bridal is the day of their funeral. An inexorable 
nature exacts a frightful penalty at the climax 
of their passion. 
The symptoms which mark preparation for 
spawning also herald their death. When the 
up-stream migration begins, the salmon enters 
on a fast that is never broken. The digestive 
organs contract, giving the fish a gaunt shrive'ed, 
misshapen appearance. There is a consequent loss 
in weight which ultimates in 30 per cent. After the 
spawning grounds are reached, and operations be¬ 
gin, the skin thickens, loses its sheen, and becomes 
discolored and l)lotched with ulcerations; the fins 
fray, parasites attack gills and intestines, the males 
develop the hooked jaw which gives the species 
its name, armed wdth enormously enlarged front 
teeth, fungus blinds the eyes, and the post¬ 
nuptial history of this great food fish is the 
most pathetic in all the happenings of nature. 
Exhausted by procreation and the long residence 
in fresh w'ater, scarred by bruises, shorn of 
their fair proportions, sightless, deformed, with¬ 
out instinct to return to the sea, the spent and 
leprous fish-forms give themselves to - the cur¬ 
rent heart broken and helpless, to drift to an 
ignominious death, and pile the river banks with 
festering bodies that contaminate the water and 
taint the air—an end ill-fitting the prince of 
anadromous fishes, wdiose Atlantic congener re¬ 
turns none the worse to the sea. My friend. 
Lieutenant Stoney, who explored Alaska north 
of the Yukon and discovered the Kubuk River, 
which he called the Putnam, and ascended for 
hundreds of miles, described to me the ghastly 
cemeteries of fish bodies that sickened his men, 
and the troops of bears and other four-footed 
ghouls and birds of prey that feasted on the 
putrid carcasses. This great waste is now fore¬ 
stalled in the Southern rivers by canning estab¬ 
lishments at their mouths, where the fish are 
caught and preserved for use while at their best 
before the richness of the flesh is impaired by 
sexual development. And Government fish 
hatcheries now' do nature’s work far better than 
nature herself. 
In vivid contrast to this tragic scene is the 
honeymoon of our ow'u charrs, our Eastern trout, 
the square tail and the aureolus of Sunapee that 
look their best on their connubial days. The 
brook trout is a passionate lover and wooer. 
Clad in lustered wedding garment, he seeks the 
upper waters of the streamlets w'ith his more 
plainly attired bride, flashing his painted sides 
before her eyes to inflame her love—acting and 
reacting the part, to quote Myron Reed, of “the 
gold-sprinkled living arrow of the wdiite water, 
able to zigzag up the cataract, able to loiter in 
the rapids, whose dainty meat is the glancing 
butterfly.” Roth fish are at their prime and 
after spawning they retire wdth dignity to rest 
and recuperate. 
But heautiful as is this marriage of the brook, 
it is cast into shadow by the nuptial festival 
that takes place every autumn on the mid-lake 
reefs at Sunapee—a festival in which a thou¬ 
sand alpine or golden trout celebrate their matri¬ 
monial rites. As the October pairing time ap¬ 
proaches, the Sunapee fish becomes resplendent 
wdth the flushes of maturing passion. The steel 
green mantle of the back and shoulders now 
seems to dissolve into a dream}' “bloom” of 
amethyst, through which the daffodil spots of 
midsummer blaze out in points of flame, while 
below the lateral line all is dazzling orange. The 
fins catch the hue of the adjacent parts, and 
pectoral, ventral, anal and lower lobe of caudal 
are marked with a lustrous white band. It is 
a unique experience to watch this American 
saibling spawning on the Sunapee shallows. 
Here in all the magnificence of their nuptial 
decoration flash schools of gauded beauties, cir- 
cl ng in proud sweeps about the submerged 
bowlders they would select as the scene of their 
espousals—'he poetry of an epithalamion in 
every motion—in one direction uncovering to 
the sunbeams in amorous leaps, their golden- 
tinctured s'des gemmed with the fire of rubies; 
in another, darting in little companies, the pen¬ 
ciled margins of their fins seeming to trail be¬ 
hind them like white ribbons under the ripples. 
There are conspicuous differences in intensity 
of general coloration, and the showy dyes of the 
milter are tempered in the spawner to a dead 
luster cadmium cream or olive chrome, with 
opal spots. The w'edding dress nature has given 
to this charr is unparagoned. Those who have 
seen the bridal pageant of these glistering 
hordes, fresh-run from icy depths in love and 
pomp of action, pronounce it a spectacle never 
to be forgotten. And not a spent fish dies. 
