The Akaroa Mail. TUESDAY, AUGUST 4, 1903 THE ACCLIMATISATION OF THE SALMON.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume LIII, Issue 2796, 4 August 1903, Page 2

The Akaroa Mail. TUESDAY, AUGUST 4, 1903 THE ACCLIMATISATION OF THE SALMON.

As our readers are aware, the attempts to introduce salmon into New Zealand waters have hitherto been a failure ; but there is still hope that some varieties of this finest of all food fishes may yet spawn in our New Zealand rivers. The correspondent of the " Hawkes Bay Herald" wired that paper on Tuesday last that in the Lobby of the House of Representatives, in Wellington, was a very interesting exhibit in the shape of a number of salmon from the Hakateramea salmon station in Otago. The fish are in glass jars and are V eserred in formalin ' wmch has maintained the original lustre in a marked degree. In one jar there are quinnat salmon six months old. In the next jar there is the parr of the quinnat at eighteen months, while in the third jar there is the same species two and a half years old, Two other jars contain specimens of the sockeye salmon, seven months and eighteen months old. The quinnat is the largest of the salmon that frequent the rivers on the Pacific Coast of North America and which we eat tinned in such large quantities in New Zealand. Some have been caught weighing lOOlbs, but the average weight of these delicious fish is from Boibs to 801bs, and it would be a boon to the Colony, indeed, if we could succeed in its acclimatisation. The sockeye, though next in commercial value to the quinnat, is one of the smallest kinds of salmon, its average weight being only about five pounds; but it is a most delicately flavoured fish. Half a million quinnat salmon ova were imported in January, 1901. A large number of the fry hatched out were liberated in Lake Ohau and m the waters running into the lake. The remainder were held in the hatchery at Hakataramea till they were one year old, when half of them were put into the Hakataramea river, a tributary of the Waitaki. The balance are to be kept until they are four years old, and it is hoped that when liberated just before the spawning season they will run up the river to spawn. Half a million ova of the sockeye or blueback were also imported, but owing to the faulty packing the ova arived in very bad condition; about 90,000 were hatched, out.

The experiment of successfully rearing these fish is being most carefully carried out, and we hear that experts pretty well agree that, if it should fail, the further importing of ova and rearing of fry would seem to be a waste of money. A great many of the young salmon liberated in Lake Ohau'have been seen and seem to be in a peculiarly healthy and flourishing condition ; so that there can be no possible doubt that, like the imported trout, they f find abundance of suitable food. Whether, when they go down to the sea, they will ever return up the Waitaki or any of the neighbouring rivers is a problem yet to be solved

" Heretofore, says our contemporary, " the English salmon liberated in the colony have disappeared nltogether from our ken. Whether they' make their way to another country or fall a prey to our sea fish remains to be proved. It is not unlikely that they follow some ocean current and find a final habitat in the South A merican rivers. At all events this is a theory held by one of our most competent pisciculturists." It is hoped by enthusiasts that the time may yet come when we 6hall have silmon-canning indnstries established on many of our Few Zealand rivers. The water of the southern r part of the Colony has much the same temperature as that in which the North American salmon flourish so exceedingly in the Northern Pacific, and the enormous size attained by their brethren, the trout, as well as the healthy appearance of the young salmon themselves, before they go to sea, shows our local food supply is peculiarly suitable. In spite, therefore, of the unsuccessful issue of previous experiments, we still have hope that in the course of a few years some one of the many varieties of this noble fish may afford sport for our anglers and wholesome and delicious food for our population.