nd, but, what is more important, a feeding-ground. And now
the kelp-beds are being exploited. The government needs potash. Formerly
our supply of potash came from Germany. But, now that we are not on
amiable terms with those nice gentle Germans, we cannot get any potash.
Hence the great, huge kelp-cutters that you hear cut only the tops of
the kelp-beds. Six feet they say, and it all grows up again quickly. But
in my opinion the once vast, heaving, wonderful beds of kelp along the
Clemente and Catalina shores have been cut too deeply. They will die.

Some of my predictions made in 1917 were verified in 1918.

A few scattered schools of albacore appeared in the channel in July. But
these were soon caught or chased away by the market boats.
Albacore-fishing was poor in other localities up and down the coast.
Many of the Jap fishermen sold their boats and sought other industry.
It was a fact, and a great pleasure, that an angler could go out for
tuna without encountering a single market boat on the sea. Maybe the
albacore did not come this year; maybe they were mostly all caught;
maybe they were growing shyer of boats; at any event, they were scarce,
and the reason seems easy to see.

It was significant that the broadbill swordfish did not return to Avalon
in 1918, as in former years. I saw only one in two months roaming the
ocean. A few were seen. Not one was caught during my stay on the island.
Many boatmen and anglers believe that the broadbills follow the
albacore. It seems safe to predict that when the albacore cease to come
to Catalina there will not be any fishing for the great flat-sworded
_Xiphias_.

The worst that came to pass in 1918, from an angler's viewpoint, was
that the market fishermen found a way to net the blue-fin tuna, both
large and small. All I could learn was that the nets were lengthened and
deepened. The Japs got into the great schools of large tuna which
appeared off Anacapa Island and netted tons and tons of hundred-pound
tuna. These schools drifted on down the middle of the Clemente Channel,
and I was the lucky fellow who happened to get among them for one
memorable day.

Take it all in all, my gloomy prophecies of other years were
substantiated in 1918, especially in regard to the devastated kelp-beds;
but there have been a few silver rifts in the black cloud, and it seems
well to end this book with mention of brighter things.

All fish brought into Avalon in 1918 were sold for food.