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33<br />
To permanently improve and maintain a good supply of salmon and other<br />
anadromous fish, and to counteract the loss sustained by the drying up of many of<br />
the smaller streams, consequent upon cutting awry the forests, as the country is<br />
advancing in agricultural development, there are two lines of action clear and plain,<br />
calling for departmental attention.<br />
First.—To open every dam, and supply every natural fall obstructing the ascent<br />
of fish to the inland waters of Canada, with good and efficient fihways.<br />
Second.—To increase the quantity of young fish by artificial culture, at least ten<br />
times its present production, which can be done without materially adding to the<br />
cost of present operations. With these improvements, all the salmon the people<br />
catch during open season, or up to the 15th August, will not check the increase, as<br />
the great body of spawning fish enter the rivers and ascend thorn after the fall rains<br />
swell the streams. They then have pure water and are seldom troubled by poachers.<br />
There are exceptions on a few streams where these fish do not enter the rivers or<br />
estuaries until the fall months ; such streams are confined chiefly to those which<br />
empty into the Straits of Northumberland.<br />
The Clyde River, which was opened on the fall of 1879, still continues to improve,<br />
in the face of much fishing, the present year's catch being 3,975 lbs. of salmon<br />
and 130 .barrels of alewives, which at market prices, as taken out of t'e water, will<br />
pay the interest at 6 per cent. on $25,000, and the cost of the fishway, producing<br />
these results, was less than $200, clearly proving the importance of fish ways. The<br />
same increase is taking place wherever good fishways have been put in the dams<br />
six to eight years ago.<br />
MACKEREL<br />
Have fallen off nearly one-half below the catch of 1887, the yield during the<br />
year aggregating but 47,806 barrels, against 93,426 barrels last year.<br />
The following table gives the annual catch in this province for the years mdicated,<br />
and although there has been a large falling off in the quantities gathered<br />
during the past two years, I do not think we have any reason to fear a permanent<br />
decline in the supply upon our coasts. Mackerel are controlled I i their movements,<br />
by water temperattlre and by their searc a for food. They spawn wherever they<br />
may happen to be located, when ready to deposit their ova, which, just as is the<br />
case with spawn of almost all other edible sea fish, floats near the urface of the<br />
water while hatching; hence the untold myriads of birds upon the surface of the<br />
aea, as well as fish and sea animals, are continually feeding upon it, and also upon<br />
Ihe young fish when hatched. Storms and gales of wind, besides, drive quantities of<br />
it upon the beaches and rocks where it of course perishes. In these natural ways,<br />
more fish life is annually destroyed, a thousand times over, than by human agency is.<br />
possible.<br />
Year. Bbls. Year. Bbls.<br />
18t9 4,575 1879...... ... 101,559<br />
1870 85,254 1880 126,432<br />
1871. 228,152 1881 63,373<br />
1872 115,631 1882 73,702<br />
1873. 141,005 1883 88,688<br />
1874. 122,250 1884 129,680<br />
1875 91,232 1885 85,313<br />
1876. 70,964 1886. 102,526<br />
1877 ....... 113,638 1887 . 93,426<br />
1878 129,698 1888 47,806<br />
By dividing the catch into two periods of ten years each, the yield has been per<br />
annum, for the former period, 114,439 barrels, and for the latter 91,242 barrels, a<br />
decline of 23,197 barrels per annum; but by leaving out the catch of 171 from the<br />
former period which was an unusual large one, and the catch of 1888 from the latter<br />
period which was a very small one, we find that the average catch for the former