August 12, 1882 Contra Costa Gazette
Chinese Fishing Pirates
How the Almond-Eyed Seine-Thrower gets Fat at the Government's Expense.
A number of bass have lately been deposited in the Straits of Carquinez by the Fish Commissioners, and the Chinese fishermen are happy. Under the existing laws, every dollar expended in stocking our bays and rivers with fish is just so much added to the wealth of these heathen pirates, while it makes no perceptible increase in the supply of food fishes for our markets. It is a notorious fact that the San Joaquin and False Rivers and adjoining sloughs are infested from one year's end to the other with Chinese fishermen, who openly defy the law and catch thousands of small fish daily, which are salted and dried and transported to San Francisco. The nets used are of such character that even the smallest minnows are caught in their meshes. The cat-fish which were planted in the sloughs some years ago, and which, if left alone, would now have numbered by the millions, have mostly been caught by these fishermen before reaching a marketable size, and before many months there will not be one left. The penalty for disregarding the fish laws is not sufficiently severe. It is true that one half the fine goes to the informer, but the offenders are principally Chinese, and they make it a rule never to pay a fine. They go to jail, if convicted, and the informer, who has spent considerable time and more money in procuring a conviction, has the poor satisfaction of reflecting that justice has been done to the Chinaman, although it has not been done to him. There are few people sufficiently patriotic to spend both time and money for doing what the officers of the law are paid to do, but which will they will not do. The consequence is that the Chinese fishermen are masters of the situation, and they cheerfully pull out the fish as fast as the Government puts them in, thus pocketing every dollar that the Government expends in this direction, besides annually depleting the streams of all kinds of food fishes. If the laws are not made more severe, the people of this Coast will not only be unable to procure new and valuable varieties of fish for consumption but, within five years, they will find it difficult to obtain home fish of any kind. The immense industry represented by our numerous salmon canneries will perish, and fish will be a luxury only obtainable by the wealth denizens of Nob Hill.