We shall await with much interest the return of the thousands of salmon hatched in 1902 in Naha stream. We may venture the prophecy that while a large percentage will return to Loring, many others will enter Yes Bay, Karta Bay, Moira Sound, and other red salmon waters along the line of their return from Dixon Entrance or the open sea.
Salmon-packing.—The canning of salmon, that is, the packing of the flesh in tin cases, hermetically sealed after boiling, was begun on the Columbia River by the Hume Brothers in 1866. In 1874 canneries were established on the Sacramento River, in 1876 on Puget Sound and on Frazer River, and in 1878 in Alaska. At first only the quinnat salmon was packed; afterwards the red salmon and the silver salmon, and finally the humpback, known commercially as pink salmon. In most cases the flesh is packed in one-pound tins, forty-eight of which constitute a case. The wholesale price in 1903 was for quinnat salmon $5.60 per case, red salmon $4.00, silver salmon $2.60, humpback salmon $2.00, and dog-salmon $1.50. It costs in round numbers $2.00 to pack a case of salmon. The very low price of the inferior brands is due to overproduction.
The output of the salmon fishery of the Pacific coast amounts to about fifteen millions per year, that of Alaska constituting seven to nine millions of this amount. Of this amount the red salmon constitutes somewhat more than half, the quinnat about four-fifths of the rest.
In almost all salmon streams there is evidence of considerable diminution in numbers, although the evidence is sometimes conflicting. In Alaska this has been due to the vicious custom, now done away with, of barricading the streams so that the fish could not reach the spawning grounds, but might be all taken with the net. In the Columbia River the reduction in numbers is mainly due to stationary traps and salmon-wheels, which leave the fish relatively little chance to reach the spawning grounds. In years of high water doubtless many salmon run in the spring which might otherwise have waited until fall.
The key to the situation lies in the artificial propagation of salmon by means of well-ordered hatcheries. By this means the fisheries of the Sacramento have been fully restored, those of the Columbia approximately maintained, and a hopeful beginning has been made in hatching red salmon in Alaska.
CHAPTER V
SALMONIDÆ—(Continued)
Salmo, the Trout and Atlantic Salmon.—The genus Salmo comprises those forms of salmon which have been longest known. As in related genera, the mouth is large, and the jaws, palatines, and tongue are armed with strong teeth. The vomer is flat, its shaft not depressed below the level of the head or chevron (the anterior end). There are a few teeth on the chevron; and behind it, on the shaft, there is either a double series of teeth or an irregular single series. These teeth in the true salmon disappear with age, but in the others (the black-spotted trout) they are persistent. The scales are silvery and moderate or small in size. There are 9 to 11 developed rays in the anal fin. The caudal fin is truncate, or variously concave or forked. There are usually 40 to 70 pyloric cœca, 11 or 12 branchiostegals, and about 20 (8 + 12) gill-rakers. The sexual peculiarities are in general less marked than in Oncorhynchus; they are also greater in the anadromous species than in those which inhabit fresh waters. In general the male in the breeding season is redder, its jaws are prolonged, the front teeth enlarged, the lower jaw turned upwards at the end, and the upper jaw notched, or sometimes even perforated, by the tip of the lower. All the species of Salmo (like those of Oncorhynchus) are more or less spotted with black. Unlike the species of Oncorhynchus, the species of Salmo feed more or less while in fresh water, and the individuals for the most part do not die after spawning, although many old males do thus perish.
The Atlantic Salmon.—The large species of Salmo, called salmon by English-speaking people (Salmo salar, Salmo trutta), are marine and anadromous, taking the place in the North Atlantic occupied in the North Pacific by the species of Oncorhynchus. Two others more or less similar in character occur in Japan and Kamchatka. The others (trout), forming the subgenus Salar, are non-migratory, or at least irregularly or imperfectly anadromous. The true or black-spotted trout abound in all streams of northern Europe, northern Asia, and in that part of North America which lies west of the Mississippi Valley. The black-spotted trout are entirely wanting in eastern America—a remarkable fact in geographical distribution, perhaps explained only on the hypothesis of the comparatively recent and Eurasiatic origin of the group, which, we may suppose, has not yet had opportunity to extend its range across the plains, unsuitable for salmon life, which separate the upper Missouri from the Great Lakes.
The salmon (Salmo salar) is the only black-spotted salmonoid found in American waters tributary to the Atlantic. In Europe, where other species similarly colored occur, the species may be best distinguished by the fact that the teeth on the shaft of the vomer mostly disappear with age. From the only other species positively known, the salmon trout (Salmo trutta), which shares this character, the true salmon may be distinguished by the presence of but eleven scales between the adipose fin and the lateral line, while Salmo trutta has about fourteen. The scales are comparatively large in the salmon, there being about one hundred and twenty-five in the lateral line. The caudal fin, which is forked in the young, becomes, as in other species of salmon, more or less truncate with age. The pyloric cœca are fifty to sixty in number.