REFORMS IN THE FISHERIES OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 305 



UTILIZATION OF WASTE FISH AND FISH PRODUCTS. 



The alarming, augmenting, and avoidable waste of fish and of products made or 

 derivable from fish and fish refuse, together with the waste of immature and of unsal- 

 able fish, are questions of national importance. Confirmed by chronic conventional 

 careless custom, these causes combined increase the cost and charges paid for by 

 the consumer and inflict a cruel commercial loss upon the fish-catchers. In trawling, 

 the net is often brought up without containing a single salable fish. Whether the 

 unsalable fish amounts to 50 or 500 per cent, or even more, as compared with the 

 salable fish is a subject upon which fishermen are proverbially reticent. When they 

 do give information on this point their evidence is so opposite and contradictory that 

 the solution of this topic is not thereby advanced. However, when coasting smacks 

 unavoidably catch nothing better than immature and other unmarketable fish, under 

 a rational economic system this fish should be used up for the manufacture of waste 

 products, which in the United States of America represent upwards of 14 per cent of 

 the total value of their fisheries. Excluding the waste of immature and unmarketable 

 fish, 1 estimate that upwards of £2,156,000 a year is wasted in the United Kingdom 

 by omitting to work up the waste products of fish after the American methods. 



Owing to pressure and other causes, almost all fish caught in the nets are either 

 dying or dead before they are landed into the smacks. British fishermen frequently 

 throw immature and unsalable fish and fish refuse into the sea. From time imme- 

 morial the Chinese and Japanese have profitably worked up and economized the waste 

 products offish. The Americans boil fish to extract the oil useless for manure, while 

 the bones are made into glue and other commercial products, and the rernaiiider is 

 used as manure. The Americans bone and skin their codfish and pack it in tins; 

 while thus making a higher-priced article, they derive extra profit by working up the 

 skins and bones for by-products. 



In the United Kingdom valuable waste products derivable from fish refuse are 

 usually ignored in every household. Excellent stock or basis for soups can be made 

 from the heads, bones, skins of fish, and of filleted fish, a familiar economy in China, 

 where to make gelatine soup even sharks' fins often fetch thirteen pence a pound. 

 The fins of sharks, rays, and dogfish yield good isinglass — a product universally neg- 

 lected by our fishermen. A bread offish "flour" is popular in some countries. 

 English rays are imported into France for making soup; bone earth from fish refuse 

 for manure; albumen from fish blood. A "meat" extract is made from fish; it has 

 no fishy flavor and is alleged to be better and cheaper than beef extracts. This 

 fish extract mixed up with pea food, flavored with herbs and salt, makes a good food 

 sausage. Herring meal, mixed with starchy food, affords an economical and excellent 

 food for cows, without giving any fishy flavor to their milk. In some foreign countries 

 domestic animals and poultry are fattened on fish. 



The heads, fins, entrails, blood, etc., give good guano. The skins and bones of 

 fish supply strong adhesive cement. The dried skins of the shark, dogfish, ray, etc., 

 are useful for polishing wood and ivory, and in Egypt serve for the soles of shoes. 

 These fish skins furnish a kind of leather called shagreen. The dried skins of flatfish 

 can be used for gloves, for "leather" purses, for clarifying coffee, as a substitute for 

 isinglass, and for artificial baits. The Chinese use painted and varnished fish skins as 

 ornamental lanterns. In Japan, wax is made from the skins and intestines of fish. 

 Eel skins serve for whip thongs, and when dressed and dried make braces. In America, 



F. C. B. 1893—20 



