The Fisheries of California [pp. 469-478]

I Te Fisheries of Californita.
THE FISHERIES OF CALIFORNIA.
IN the summer of 1879 it was the
writer's good fortune to'be sent as a
joint agent of the United States Fish
Commission and of the United States
Census Bureau, to make a canvass of the
fishes and the fisheries of the Pacific
Coast. At that time very little was on
record in regard to the fish industries of
the Coast, and beyond a general knowledge of the methods and results of the
salmon fisheries the public could scarcely be said to have any exact information
as to the marine industries of California,
Washington, and Oregon. Our knowledge of the fishes themselves was at that
time extremely defective. A great many
species had been described from specimens brought in by different surveying
parties, or by the chance interest of
travelers. These species had never been
compared with one another. Very many
of them were merely nominal; that is,
founded upon imperfect, defective, or
abnormal specimens of the same species,
or upon no specimens at all; while on
the other hand very many, even of the
common and characteristic food fishes,
had not yet been known to science.
In this work I was assisted by Dr.
Charles H. Gilbert, at that time just
entering upon his career as a naturalist.
Our instructions were to find out everything that could be found out in regard
to the fishes themselves, to send not less
than fifty specimens of every obtainable
species in alcohol to Washington, and
to enter with equal minuteness into the
details of the fisheries. We were to give
as close attention to those counties in
which there were no fisheries at all, but
where fisheries were possible, as to those
in which the interest was already a large
one. The purposes of the investigation
were largely historical, as an exact account of the conditions prevailing in the
different towns along the coast would be
useful in future time, as a basis of comparison with the results which might
then be achieved.
After this year's work in I88o, as the
basis of my knowledge of the fisheries
of the State, it was with the greatest
interest that I took up the recently
published review of the fisheries of the
Pacific Coast, issued by the Census Bureau as the record for the Ith Census,
the Census of I890. This report, of
which I am glad to be able to speak in
the highest terms, has been compiled
by Capt. J. W. Collins, of the United
States Fish Commission, from the reports sent in by Mr. W. A. Wilcox, statistical agent of the Fish Commission,
and by his assistant, Mr. A. B. Alexander.
This paper of Wilcox and Collins is
not strictly a part of the work of the
Census Bureau. The attempts of that
Bureau to make a complete record of
the fisheries of the country for the year
I890 became a failure, for reasons which
I need not discuss here. This is a compilation of the statistics furnished to
the Fish Commission chiefly during the
year I888-89 by a member of its bureau
of statistics, and this report the Census
Bureau has wisely adopted for its own.
I wish in this paper to make some
comparisons between the conditions of
the fisheries along the coast of California in I88o, and the conditions which
Mr. Wilcox found nearly ten years later.
As-the fishes of this coast have remained
the same during this period, and will
remain the same for many centuries, I
will preface this comparison by a short
account of the number and distribution
of the different species.
The total number of species of fishes
known to exist in the waters of Califor
1892.]
469