No. 3 (1921) MANUFACTURE OF FISH OIL AND GUANO 169 



(6) the incurring of objections by the magistrates and sani- 

 tary authorities. 



The minimizing of difficulties and the removal of these objec- 

 tions will be dealt with below. 



47. Catching. — As stated above, the oil sardine is the only fish 

 utilized in bulk for oil and guano on the Madras Coasts at present ; 

 only on the West Coast are there shoals of sufficient size, fre- 

 quency, and quality to warrant their use in this manner. They 

 are thoroughly edible fish especially when large and fat, and thus 

 differ from the menhaden; indeed it is solely because they are 

 caught in masses which cannot — owing to climate, want of cold 

 transport, cold storage, etc.- -be utilized directly as food, that these 

 excellent fish are turned into oil and fertilizer; when fish taint in 

 a very few hours, so that runners cannot take the fish more than a 

 few miles, and when rail transport is scanty and infrequent, and 

 unable, for want of regularity and importance of supplies, to put 

 refrigerating vans on the trains, masses of fish must rot unless 

 dealt with in this way. Moreover, it is to be remembered that the 

 fertilizer obtained from the fish enables the soil to produce abund- 

 ant crops so that they are really consumed indirectly as food or 

 turned into industrial crops. 



It is believed that the oil sardine remains on the coast through- 

 out the year, though not always accessible whether by reason of 

 the monsoon or by their retreating to deeper waters : it is note- 

 worthy that the American fishermen declare that in the winter the 

 menhaden are present but do not come to the surface. 



48. On the West Coast of this Presidency methods are primitive 

 in comparison with those in the United States of America. The 

 general method of capture is by pairs of canoes worked by six or 

 eight men, per canoe and operating the " odam " or " paithu " net 

 which, like the purse net of America, catches the fish by surround- 

 ing a shoal with a wall of net. On getting in touch with a shoal, the 

 two boats separate and move round in a circle paying out the net 

 as they go; on coming together the net is hauled in, the purse of 

 the net preventing escape below, until the mass of fish is brought 

 up to the boats to which they are at once transferred. Each boat 

 may hold a ton of fish, and since in a place like Tanur there may be 

 150 to 200 pairs of boats, very considerable catches are possible if 

 the fish are abundant. It is indeed on such occasions and places 

 that, in the absence of oil and guano factories, and even in places 



