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11. ECONOMICS OF THE FISHERIES GENERALLY 



General and Qualitative 



PRODUCTION 



The Ultimate Sources of Production of Fisheries and Agriculture. Nearly 

 all of the food and raw materials of the earth have been derived from the 

 29 per cent of its surface occupied by land. Only a small amount by com- 

 parison is supplied by the remaining 71 per cent occupied by the ocean, 

 although it contains the great bulk of the world's accessible soluble minerals, 

 including the fertilizers on which plants and animals subsist. The fisheries 

 deplete no natural resources, they automatically replenish themselves, and 

 what they produce is a net return of wealth to the land from which it was 

 originally lost. As the world's human populations continue to increase, 

 demanding about 2>4 acres of agricultural land for the support of each 

 person and with the possibility that agricultural land may in future have 

 to be used to grow raw materials for the manufacture of liquid fuels, the 

 need becomes greater to determine what the resources of the sea are and 

 how to use them. 



The first fact of economic significance is that in contrast with agricul- 

 tural soil a few inches thick which must be maintained, protected from 

 erosion and fertilized,^ the ultimate source of the fisheries, the ocean and 

 its content of chemical fertility and its photo synthetic production of basic 

 vegetation, is inexhaustible and requires no fertilization or maintenance. 

 The sea is so vast and its water is in such continuous circulation that man 

 can do nothing by way of addition or subtraction to affect in the slightest 

 detectable degree the chemical fertility or the production of basic vegeta- 

 tion except locally and temporarily and on a very small scale. This assertion 

 applies also, with perhaps slightly more qualification, to the large inland 

 seas and lakes, and exception must of course be made for smaller lakes,, 

 ponds, etc. The word inexhaustible here does not mean that the supply of 

 fish, even at sea, is limitless. There is undoubtedly some limit, as yet un- 

 known, to the possible yield of fish as natural wildlife even at sea, both 



I. 815,000 tons of nitrogen and 1,850,000 tons of phosphorus were used to fertilize the soil in 

 the United States in 1948. Lodge, F. S. Fertilizers in 1947-48. Chemical and Engineering News, 

 Vol. 26, p. 18-19, 1948. 



301 



