The Ketchikan miner., 1915-06-17

to Representative J. R. Heckman 's lecture on the Alaska Salmon at Red Men Hall Saturday night. The speaker showed himself to be thor oughly master of his subject and held the close attention of his hear CTS for upwards of an hour.
 He made himself clear from tho be- ginning that the salmon industry Is one of the least known of all the in dustries of the Pacific Coats, of which it stands in the front rank.
 He started with explaining the habits of the different kinds of salmon and
 how the scarcity of suitable spawn
 ing beds prevents any great quanti-
 ties of red salmon being found in Southeastern Alaska. 'sThis partic
 uiar kind of fish, said Mir. Heck.
 man, must have streams heading in
 lakes with creeks tributary thereto,
 for spawning purposes, while the
 where" Continuing MT. Heekman
 showed that the life story of the red
 salmon after it leaves the parent
 stream when it is about year old,
 until it returns at maturity, three
 years or more later, is mystery.
 His personal theory backed by the
 fact that he has found deep sea
 shells in the stomach of the red fish,
 is that they go out to deep water
 and stay there until they reach ma
 tufity.
 He then told of the habits of the
 red salmon at spawning time, how
 they struggled up over the falls in
 the creeks on their way 60 the spawn
 ing grounds; of the digging of holes
 in the gravel by the male fish; of
 the spawning and fertilization; of
 the time required for the germ In the egg to come to life; and tine very
 small proportion of the fish that live. According to his figures the female
 red salmon deposits in the neighbor- hood of four thousand eggs, and still in the natural state not to exceed two of the fish matching therefrom ever reach maturity. The reason for this small proportion reaching maturity
 are many according to MT. Hickman For instance fish coming later to the spawning grounds disturb the eggs ef those fish which had spawned ahead of them; the stream s action washes the eggs out of the gravel; trout, setslpins, guiis, ducks and other birds feed on the eggs, and the fungus which Is the enemy of the hatcheries smother the unmatched fish. These are few, the chief ones prot ably of the enemies of the embryo ano young salmon, which result in SC
 small a proportion of the eggs pro
 ,iucing fish.
 Mir. Heckman then took up the
 matter of artificial propagation, first gl ing 1t as his opinion that the prop ag4tion of the fish was a matter to
 De handled by the government. Ht showed by telling Of the three rec
 fish streams emptying into Moira | sound, each of which produces sal ! mon of different size, that fish hatch ed i'll the natural state returned te the parent stream. He does not think however that artificially hatch ed fish do so. He gave it as his op
 inion that they return to the locality
 but not necessarily to the very stream. As an illustration of this he told of the Bureau of Fisheries mark ing 100 young fish in 1903 at the Fortman Hatchery ,the biggest sal. 1 mon hatchery in the world, that the Alaska Packers Association maintains above Loring under the able difec- tion of Fred Patching. This was lone by removing the two ventll fins before the fish were turned out from the hatchery, when they were from ? to 211a inches in length. Start ing three years later that is four years after the marked fish were 
 spawned, red salmon with the two vental fins missing and scales grow ing over where the missing fin should have been, were caught at Yes Bay, about 30 miles from the mouth of the Naha river on which the Fortman
 Hatchery is located, and for several
 years thereafter. The same was true in lesser sense of fish caught in the Mana, thus proving the logic of his statement that they return to the esion but not necessarily to the same stream.
 Mir. Hickman then told how several years ago the government had re- quired the eanners to operate hatch cry, which accounted for the com panics being in the hatchery busin- ess. At that time four or five were
 built, ranging from the immense plant at the FortmaD Hatchery where one hundred and ten millions of eggs