The Fisheries of California [pp. 469-478]

The Fisheries of Ca/liforltia.
different counties may be of interest.
In I88o the annual catch of San Diego
County was estimated at I I3,200 pounds
for the year. At that time San Diego
was in one of the depressed intervals
between real estate booms, and her fish ery industries were small. At the time
of my first visit to San Diego, in I879, I
found the fisheries of the county chiefly
confined to the work of the Chinese
colony in the city of San Diego. They
scraped the waters of the bay with fine meshed nets, catching all kinds of fishes,
large or small, old or young, regardless
of the laws of the State, which prohib ited the use of fine-mesh nets and the
sale of small fish. The larger fish were
peddled about the town of San Diego,
or sent inland to the fruit ranches; but
the great bulk of the catch was soaked
in brine, salted, and dried, for the purpose
of shipment to China, or to the Chinese
camps along the railroad. Among these
salted fish were to be found the young
of every species known to the bay, as
well as many small fishes,-even fishes
under twvo inches in length, species
never regarded as available for food, or
as having any value except as food for
larger fishes.
At this time I called the attention of
the people of San Diego to the rapid
destruction of the fishes of their bay,
and to the violation of the law on the
part of the Chinese. A meeting was
held in one of the warehouses in San
Diego. I presented to the citizens the
laws of the State, and their purpose of
protection of the fishes of the bav. An
educated Chinaman, apparently a lawyer, presented the side of the Chinese
fishermen. His plea was that just as
the water came in and out of the bay,
so that whatever amount might be taken
out would not lower its level, so the
fish came in and out of the bay from the
boundless supply of the ocean, and all
the fishing that might go on in the bay
would produce no check in their abundance. This, of course, was only true of
\OI,. XX-41
the pelagic or migratory fishes. The
ordinaryfishes which the Chinese caught
were spawned in the bay and lived their
whole lives there. A few years of fish ing such as was going on would leave
the bay devoid of fish life. Energetic
action was taken by the citizens of San
Diego, and the chief capitalist of the
Chinese colony was put under bonds
that there should be no more fishing in
violation of the law. The Chinese fish ermen, however, understood that what
was called "Law" was simply the arbi trary will of the agents of the Fish
Commission who had visited their town.
I was, in fact, familiarly known to them
as the "Law," and when the "Law"
had left San Diego, they ventured upon
illegal fishing again. This was promptly
stopped by the authorities, and for sev eral months there war virtually no fish ing at all in San Diego Bay. The Chi nese did not care to fish in the bay unless
they could use fine mesh-nets, and use
everything they caught.
On my return to San Diego six months
later I found it impossible to secure specimens of fishes for any purpose: my own
nets were insufficient for the needed
collections. After much persuasion I
succeeded in making an arrangement
with two Chinese fishermen, whereby,
on my insuring them from all penalties,
they agreed to fish for the United States
Fish Commission. On my last day of
exploration of the bay I gave my fishermen the fishes for which I had no use.
This surplus of the fish they peddled
about the city. Some of the fish were
too small to have been caught in a net
of the legal size, and the city police were
prompt in noticing this. Just as I was
leaving San Diego one of my junkmen
came to me in the hands of a policeman. He had been'arrested for the illegal sale of fish, and after being brought
before the magistrate he had insisted
upon being carried before the "Law"
instead, and so he was brought to where
I was packing my specimens. I went
1892.]
473