CATCHING SALMON BY MACHINERY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LVI, Issue 6503, 30 December 1881, Page 5

CATCHING SALMON BY MACHINERY.

A new and very destructive Sailing device is reported from the Colombia Kiver, Oregon. It consists of a jetty o£ rocks bode 006 from a point on the shore of the rirer, outside of which is a planked sluiceway, in which as undershot wheel with large tank buckets re* volvc*. According to the Scientific American, the sluiceway was built when the river was at its lowest stage of water, and the wheel is hong to that it can be railed or lowered as may be desired, according to stage of water. The instinct of the swlmnn is to ran up the rirer alongside of the banks instead of mid-channel. By this the fish can take advantage of the eddies below jotting points of land. On these projecting points the Indiana have from time Immemorial taken salmon in Luge numbers by using dip nets. The jetty built out from the point above-named makes a larger and longer alack water behind it, and the salmon rounding the point rush in to txio sluiceway to get up the nver. In the sluiceway, the wheel, which revolves in tae current, is gauged so as to sweep within a foot of the bottom, and the salmon are scooped up in the tanka or buckets, which latter let out the water as they ascend. On the wheel descending the fish are thrown out into a trough or gutter leading to a pen below, where they remain until token away to be canned. The arrangement of the sluice, wheels, &c., is a moat successful one, the catch of adult salmon, which are the only ones canned, running from 1500 to 4000 per day. Ihere ie virtually no expense in taking the fish save attending to the pen. As the fishermen who toko salmon in boats in the Lower Columbia river demand and receive from SO to 60 cento per fish from the canneries, one can readily see what a vast profit the use of the wheel makes to the cannery connected with it. A fatal objection to this device arises from the fact that it scoops up and kills little fish as well a* big ones, and as yet no provision is made, in connection with it, for the escape of the former. Unless the threatened wholesale killing of salmon too small for canning is prevented, the supply will be entirely cut off, and the entire canning industry destroyed, if the wheel comet into general use.