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FISH IN EAST SIBERIAN RIVERS Salmon So Plentiful That Dogs Catch Them as They Swim If natural conditions are favorable and if there is no interference by man with the processes of re ¬ production fish and especially salmon tend to increase until the rivers into which they run can hardly hold them writes Secretary George Keenan of the Victoria Fisheries Protective Association Some years ago I made a journey of sir or seven hundred miles on horseback through the peninsula of Kamchatka on the eastern coast of Asia AsiaAs As I rode northward from Petropavlovsk to the head of the Okhotsk Sea in August and September I crossed perhaps a hundred rivers or brooks run ¬ ning either into that sea or into the Pacific Ocean To say that these streams were full of salmon would be an understatement They were literally gorged and choked with them Thousands if not tens of thousands were coming in with every tide and were struggling upstream to their snawning places They were so plentiful that you could not only take from 100 to 200 at every haul of a seine but in the smaller streams you could wade into the shallow water and throw them out with your hands Twelve or fifteenpound fish might be seen struggling up brooks that you could step across where the water was hardly deep enough to float them themSO SO PLENTIFUL DOGS CAUGHT THEM THEMDogs Dogs caught them in their mouths I have seen them do it and even the clumsy bear managed to secure one when he was hungry or when lie was tired of blueberries and wanted a change of diet In September we sometimes rode an hour or two after it began to grow dark before we could find a brook whose water was not so contaminated by the dead and decaying bodies of salmon that it was unfit for use Everywhere the natives were catch ¬ ing them by the thousand in seines for winter use useAll All the people of northeastern Siberia with the exception of the reindeer Koraks and Chuckchees practically live all the year round on fresh or dried salmon And not only that but they feed thousands of sledge dogs on them Has the supply ever failed Never within the memory of man For more than a century the people have been taking hundreds of tons of salmon out of those Siberian rivers every year and yet the stock remains un diminished 1 remember one stream in Kamchatka not much bigger than North Iliver and not half as big as the Mira which for more than a hundred years has been producing salmon enough to feed a dozen villages of from 200 to 500 people each to say nothjng of two or three thousand sledge dogs which live on dried fish the year round Why does this river continue to produce salmon at such a rate centuryIs for a whole century Is it because the Pacific Ocean contained origi ¬ nally more than the Atlantic so that there were more to run into the Pacific coast rivers History does not so state Two centuries ago there were just as many in the rivers of Nova Scotia and New England The Merrimac Kiver of Massachusetts ind New Hampshire were so filled with them that the salmon nearest the banks were crowded out on to the dry land In the Connecticut Iliver there were so man that as Peters quaintly says in his History of Connecticut No finite being could number them As late as 1783 the peonle of Con ¬ necticut derived half their supply of food from this source and hired laborers working under con ¬ tract stipulated that they should not be compelled to eat salmon more than so many days a week weekCIVILZED CIVILZED TREATMENT OF FISH FISHIf If therefore we now have only a few salmon while the northern Asiatics have an abundance it js not because there were more in the Pacific than in the Atlantic It is because civilized man has never allowed a sufficient number to reach their breeding grounds while uncivilized man has always given them free access to their spawning places and has thus kept up the stock stockIn In both New England and Nova Scotia rivers were obstructed by dams weirs and standing nets and the water was polluted by sawdust and the waste products of manufactories In Siberia there were none of these things to prevent the fisli from setting to their spawning places The Siberian na ¬ tives never used standing nets either in the streams or along the coasts They caught all they wanted by hauling seines in the rivers while the salmon were coming in and during a part of every day and the whole of every night the fish were allowed to pass unchecked and unhindered Standing nets wherever placed work all the time while seines or rods and lines are in use only a part of the time ind leave the rivers and the coastal waters unob ¬ structed and undisturbed during onehalf at least of every day dayBy By wasteful methods of fishing and by catching as many as possible regardless of the annual rate of increase we have reduced the number of our salmon until in many of our streams there are none at all while even in the Margaree there are not onequarter as many as there ought to be What have we done and what are we doing to remedy this state of tilings
