The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, November 24, 1901, Page 11

THE SUNDAY CALL. 11 V74 C AZBRATROZS WORK AND UFE ON THE U. S. FISH COMMISSION'S BOAG ASBABROSS. . HE United States steamship Alba- tross has lately cruise of severa ters of Southea has been investigating eries. e canneries of Alaska have grown so much in numbers and size in the last few years and so m millions of dollars bave been invested in them that it is well for the companies that their fisheries re- ceive s0 much Government care and at- tention. It is not se very long ago that all sorts ©of schemes and devices were in- force to trap the salmon on the run up for the spawning season. The barricade was the most usual trap, consisting of a tree thrown across the stream and heavy logs rhiled to the tree £0 they touched the water. The salmon T find themselves and would not have the leap, ret a com! s stopped to and were There is now a found using & barr for maintenance many of streams one enother’s s The work do: the Albatrose has amination of ne of $1000 for any icade and $250 per of the same as nies now same keer sharp lookout beern the ex cheries ; worki were made, with ar wiedge of the sez tem of packing and work y of the streams were explored this r with the aid of the Ind s and their risks t oces and there are certair un Chamberlain, Albatross, givi e explorers Mr assistant fish expert experience that ung officer and he had on one of the ke wey were explori It appe at they 0 o rear capsizing and some fell overb went over into the s articles and as et and car- e pretty iged the distance and possible 1o get a rope , 50 he proceeded to save valuable t around the bend he was shivering but safe offi- ashore. The officer was a he managed to sy be- amberlain, by —, here, — me it pa; ers some whisky in't take a drink Ve always took a flask along after Chamberlain concluded. f the lakes, though fc and bottoms, and, while ex- of them Mr. Rod the - officer, with a heavy pack of in- ments and guns, suddenly began to an, The moment was a critical one, but with e of mind he stood perfectly still and called to one of the Indians to come and take his pack. The Indian moved gingerly to within two feet of Mr. Rodman and took his pack from behind, and with the load off his shoulders he ceased to sink and slowly moved back out of danger. ‘With the dangers there are the pleas- ures. The magnificent scenery, the gla- woods and the wonders of the country—all tell a story impres- the mind. s & unique Pountry, with its clear > perfect for photography; the can- d salters, the hatcheries—all read to any one to gain anxious n there is the well earned rest on the cozy ship after a hard daj swapping of experiences over the coked dinner; the fragrance of the after dinner weed—all these good things make an “entente cord and force one to forget the iciness of the rivers crossed, the shaking sand and the whirling pools. The in Alaskan waters was cut E t this year account of smallpox breaking out on board at Naked Island anchorage, Prince William Sound, the ship going into quarantine at Swansdown Harbor. cruise on \e cases fortunately proved very slight On the 12th of September the Albatross started another important work, namely, the setting of pots for lobsters. The following notes on the history of nting of Bastern lobsters in the Pa- > Ocean will give an idea of the great, rsevering trouble that has been taken the cif in the past to introduce the Eastern lob- ster on the coast. Five attempts have been made. The first trial was a faiflure, owing to a rail- road accident; the others were successful to the extent of reaching the coast with live lobsters and depositing them in suit- able water: In 1573 Livingston Stone, who repre- sented the United States Fish Commis- sion, made his first attempt to transport live lobsters. He started with 162 lobsters obtained@ from Woods Holl and Massachusetts Bay, By the breaking of a raflroad bridge over the Elkhorn River, near Omaha, the aquarium car was wrecked. In 1874 Mr. Stone made a second attempt, the con- signment consisting of 150 egg-bearing lobsters, procured in Boston, but only a few lobsters reached the coast alive. They deposited in San Francisco Bay at Oakland on June 12. wer Mr. Stone did not make another attempt till 1879, when he brought over twenty- two females, to which were attached 400,000 eggs nearly ready to hatch. Twen- ty-one lobsters arrived safely and were deposited in excellent condition off Bonita Lighthouse, in a sheltered position a few miles outside of the Golden Gate. Nine years later the Fish Commission sent, under the charge of J. Frank Eilis, a relativ large number of adult and embryo lobsters to California, which were planted in Monterey Bay. On June 23 of the same year 162 lobsters were placed in the sea about three-quar- ters of a mile off shore from Pacific Grove in water twelve fathoms deep with a rocky bottom. A second plant of ninety-five lobsters was made July 1 a mile off Point Lobos. On July 4 the Albatross left San Fran. cisco with thirty lobsters on board, the lot consisting of thirteen males and sev- enteen females. These were planted off Trinidad Lighthouse. A further shipment was made in Jan- uary, 1889, Thes and Or were intended for the Washington gon coasts. Of the 710 lobsters ed the trip and were : Eighty-eight off Cape ppointment at the mouth of the Co- lumbia River, twenty-two in Shoalwater Bay and 123 in Puget Sound, new Port Tow! d. The question naturally arises, “Where are the lobsters?” *The Fi ‘ommissioners were anxious to have this question answered so the Al- batross has been setting pots on her way down. First at Port Townsend, then sev- eral at Cape Flattery. At Cape Disappointment the pots were left in the care of the captain of the life- saving station. On arriving off the Faral- lones a man was left on the islands to set pots there. X Yet the question remains unanswered, “Where are the lobsters?” No one knows. A. B. Alexander, fishing expert on the Albatross, thinks that some parts of the Alaskan coast afford better condi- tions for the lobster than exist on the shores of the Pacific Coast, chiefly urging “that the temperature and other environ- ments of that region correspond more closely to the home of the lobster on the Atlantic Coast.” “It is quite evident,” he continues, “that Jobsters require a great change in temper- ature of water, far greater than they would find off the Pacific Coast below 50 degrees north latitude, from the fact that they are only found in latitudes in charge of J. Frank Ellis., % where the water undergoes .such a change.” Captain Moser, late of the Albatross, is convinced that the Pacific Ocean, owing to its rocky bottom, is unsuitable to the lobster. The ideal bottom should be soft and more or less muddy, permitting the lob- ster to burrow and hide. Captain Moser also thinks that the seals have had much to do with the disappear- ance of the lobster, and it is a fact that, all said to the contrary, no Eastern lob- ster has ever been caught on the Pacific Coast. Francis Hobert Herrick, Ph. D., pro- fessor of biology in Adelbert College of ‘Western Reserve University, gives a brief summary of the most important observa- tions, which have been detailed by him in a most exhaustive work on the “Life His- tory of the Lobster.” The geographical range of the lobster comes about 20 degrces of north latitude, from the thirty-fifth to the fifty-second parallels, and includes a strip of the At- lantic Ocean 1300 miles long and from thirty to fifty miles broad. The most northern point at which its capture has been recorded is Henley har- bor, Labrador; the most southern point the coast of North Carolina. In speaking of the migration of the lob- ster Professor Herrick has this to say: ///117///’//////// / gy, / o I // / 1, W “No coastwise migrations are known t® occur, but large numbers of lobsters move to and from dcep water in fall and spring, the migration being influenced by the temperature of the ocean, by the abundance of food and to some extent by the molting and breeding habits.” The Albatross has a most enviable rec- ord for work splendidly carried out and accomplished. She made her first cruise in 1833 under Captain T. L. Tanner, and up to the present time her dredging rec- ords include data connected with 1785 hauls of the dredge heam, trawl, etc., at all depths, from the shore down to 4177 fathoms, and cover areas extending fron the banks of Newfoundland along both coasts of North and South America to Bering Sea, with limited areas in the trop- ical Pacific and the region from Japan to Kamschatka. Since the Albatross went into commission she has been in charge of four naval commanders, whose periods of service have been as ‘cllows:- November, 1882, to May, 1804, T. L. Tanner; May, 1894, to May, 1896, F. J. Drake; May 139 to October 25, 1901, J. F. Moser, and on Octo- ber 26, 1901, Chauncey Thomas took com- ‘mand. The Albatross has been detailed at va- rious times for special work in other de- partments. In 1889 she was assigned to the service of the Senate Commiitee on Indian Af- fairs in Alaskan waters, and in 1891 she was engaged in the survey of the cable Toute between California and the Ha- walian Islands. In 1805 she was detailed to the Navy Department for service in the war with Spain. During the Bering Sea controversies the vessel was employed with the naval patrol of the Bering Sea and the investigation of the fur seal fish- eries. The next cruise of the Albatross will be to Honolulu, for whick port she will sall about the middle of December, ii | s | ’