electric and others are direct driven with a single engine. Most 

 of the vessels are capable of freezing daily 24 to 30 toas of 

 whole fish. 



The great problem concerning this class of vessel is whether 

 there will be enough fish in the North Atlantic to enable these 

 ships to work profitably. Or rather, whether there will be 

 enough of the varieties demanded by a British public that has 

 highly conservative tastes. We estimate that we must catch 

 a minimum of 1 2 tons a day while on the fishing grounds be- 

 fore these ships break even. Some of the ships of other 

 European countries differ from ours, partly because they are 

 fishing for a public with different tastes and hence are fishing 

 different stocks. Nevertheless the stern-freezer that I have 

 described is not peculiar to Britain and may be found in France, 

 Belgium, Holland and West Germany, save that most of the 

 freezers used by Western Germany fillet their fish at sea rather 

 than freeze it whole or headless. 



There are, in addition, on order in the U.K., for delivery 

 later this year, three small factory trawlers of 1 70 feet in length. 

 Not much is yet known about these, though everyone in Britain 

 is looking forward to their appearance with great interest. It 

 seems likely that we shall soon settle down to a compromise on 

 this issue of filleting or freezing whole : the answer may well be 

 to install no more processing facilities for the production of fish 

 stick blocks and/or fish fillets than those which will be kept, say, 

 at least 90% employed continuously while on the fishing 

 grounds — despite the inevitable fluctuation in catching rates. 

 The situation will then be that while fishing is slack all the 

 catch will be processed and frozen but as fishing grows heavier 

 more and more will be frozen whole. This part-and-part sys- 

 tem obviously reduces greatly the extent to which costly labour 

 and equipment stand idle — as it must do in a full factors- 

 trawler handling fluctuating catches. At the same time, such 

 a system reduces the size of the ship required for any given level 

 of catch. Clearly, however, some nice calculations are required 

 here. 



Photographs in this article show each class of ship oper- 

 ated by Boston Deep Sea Fisheries, Ltd. 





66-foot seine netter M/V Skatiderborg operates in North 

 Sea. 



102-foot, near-water trawler M/V Boston Wayfarer 

 operates in North Sea. This class seldom goes over 150 

 miles from home port. 



219-525 O - 66 



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