Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
and sometimes slept next to these fires, between daylight fishing trips,
face-down in the sand. In 1876, when the Italians introduced the paran-
zella net (also called a “drag net”), it pulled so many fish up out of the bay
and into the market that prices went down. Drag nets were among the first
types of fishing gear to be restricted.
Even back then, people such as Wakeman were taking note of how all
this fishing affected the bay itself. The surveyor lamented the loss of so
many young and unwanted fish, fish that might have survived if thrown
back into the bay but had instead perished from compression in the nets.
On April 2, 1870, in response to “serious inroads in all segments of fish
and wildlife resources,” the state set out to preserve and restore its fish by
creating Wakeman's employer, a body now known as the California State
Fish and Game Commission. The first things this new regulatory body did
were to pass legislation to help salmon navigate all the new obstructions in
their migratory path upstream, to import new species to the bay, and to
curb the hunting of waterfowl and shorebirds.
San Francisco remained the hub of fishing in the region. At the Vallejo
Wharf, home of the Italian fishing community, up to 400 men relied
chiefly on fishing for a living, and their families and friends built up the
complex of restaurants, fish markets, and shops that now extends into and
around Fisherman's Wharf today. Beyond San Francisco, every town of
any size on the bay shoreline or along the Sacramento River had its fishers
and vessels. By the late 1800s, there were nearly 5,000 men in more than
1,000 vessels out fishing every year in the San Francisco Bay region, and
producing $2.8 million worth of product.
This was also a time when Californians got the bright idea of making
fish populations bigger and better. In 1872, a man named Livingston Stone
set up the nation's first hatchery for the artificial culture of salmon eggs
and fry on the McCloud River. His initial purpose was to supply fertilized
salmon eggs to the East Coast, but he was soon working with the state of
California to augment local supplies. Gold miners had sent enough rubble
and dirt into state rivers to smother much of the habitat the fish used to
spawn. Fish biologists found, however, that fertilizing and rearing young
salmon was quite straightforward. All they had to do was slice open a fe-
male, spill out her plump red roe, and mix the eggs with the milky milt of
a hook-nosed male. Releasing fry only after they were larger kept the fish
safe from predators during their most vulnerable life stages.
The Baird hatchery on the McCloud River helped augment depleted
Pacific and Atlantic Salmon stocks, while nearby Campbell Hatchery set
about rearing native Steelhead and Mountain Trout to stock lakes and riv-
ers (see also p. 223, “Production or Conservation Hatcheries?”).
In addition to trying to pump up existing native populations, the early
fish commissioners decided to bring in some favorite species from other
