312 MARINE FISHERIES OF NORTH CAROLINA 



their voting power, even if concentrated in one State, would be small; 

 diffused as it is over thousands of miles of coast and in thirty-odd States, 

 it is negligible. 



Natural Characteristics of the Supply of Fish. Although the biological 

 basis of the fisheries of North Carolina is treated in another Part of the 

 Survey, a brief sketch of the biological foundation is offered here to facili- 

 tate an understanding of the economics of the fisheries. 



The totality of living things collectively on land and at sea begins, as 

 said earlier, with plants which collect the chemical fertilizers, nitrates, 

 phosphates, potash, carbon dioxide, water, and several other components 

 and organize them into the substance of plants which are food for vege- 

 tarian animals; these vegetarians are prey for somewhat larger carnivorous 

 animals some of which are prey to still larger ones. In these respects the 

 web of life at sea is similar to that on land. There are important differences, 

 however, between land and sea bio-economics. On land nearly all of our 

 production, i.e., agriculture and animal husbandry, based on life is man- 

 aged, regulated, and cultivated. The produce oj the sea is derived jroni 

 wild life under natural conditions to which our operations must conform 

 with little or no control or management of the productive factors. Since 

 man does not consume carnivorous land animals for food, the process of 

 agricultural production is carried only one step from plant crops to vege- 

 tarian animals which are consumed as food by man. This two-step produc- 

 tion is possible because land plants are relatively large, and are consumed 

 by man as such or converted as food directly at one step into large animals, 

 such as cattle, sheep, and pigs. Marine plants are microscopic or nearly 

 so in size, and their conversion into animals usually consists of several 

 carnivorous steps after the microscopic plants have been consumed by 

 very small vegetarians and some larger fishes. Practically all fishes are 

 to some extent carnivorous, some of them exclusively so. 



The mass of living things collectively at sea on which the fisheries 

 depend is almost inconceivably complex, multifarious and mutually de- 

 structive and interdependent. Nearly all marine animals, large and small, 

 reproduce by laying prodigious numbers of eggs. The eggs which hatch 

 and survive to maturity to produce another generation are not the rule, 

 but exceedingly rare exceptions, which have escaped the hazards of exist- 

 ence — perhaps one in ten thousand or a million. At sea there are no holes 

 or caves, and few hiding places; life of marine animals is a continuous 

 round of killing and being killed and consuming and being consumed. The 

 fishes, starfishes, jellyfishes, sponges, squids, shrimps, crabs, oysters, 

 clams which we see and myriads of others which we do not see, all consume, 

 one way or another, the same basic microscopic vegetation; they eat the 

 vegetation itself or they eat the small quarter-inch vegetarian animals, they 



