ECONOMICS OF THE FISHERIES 417 



mud or water, and it has been only recently that power dredges have been 

 introduced or significantly improved; until 1948 power propelled craft 

 were prohibited in North Carolina for dredging oysters. A great deal of 

 hand labor is used to cull oysters and to shuck them, both in plants and 

 restaurants, little of which has been successfully mechanized. The increased 

 cost of production occasioned by increased labor wages could be aggravated 

 by diminished yield per day's work on depleted natural rocks. The conse- 

 quences of these adverse effects would be a dilemma for management to 

 decide whether to cut prices to maintain volume or to maintain prices and 

 let volume decrease, or to do some of both. Where, as seemingly in oysters, 

 costs have advanced sharply, management may have no freedom of choice 

 but to let volume diminish since it cannot reduce prices to stimulate sales. 



The Shrimp fishery is largely a development of the past forty years, since 

 1908, when the otter trawl came into use for shrimp. From 8 million 

 pounds, whole weight, in 1890 annual production rose to 19 million pounds in 

 1908. In 1938-40, production was 7.8 times what it had been in 1908, while 

 oyster production had declined 46 per cent in the same period. Notwith- 

 standing the increasing volume of shrimp, prices increased, the 1938-40 

 average price being twice the 1890 price and 34 per cent higher than 1908; 

 shrimp fishermen received more than ten times as many total dollars for 

 the catch with 8^ times as much other commodities at wholesale with the 

 proceeds in 1938-40 as in 1908. The fish price ratio (the ratio of shrimp 

 prices to the average prices of all food fish) doubled over 1890 and increased 

 T,TfVz per cent from 1908. 



When judged by all the standards of measurement of a species that we 

 have, the shrimp appears to have many advantages : being a luxury delicacy 

 item, its price is not determined by bare competition as a staple item of 

 food; it is easily subject to economical mass capture; its net edible portion 

 is a high percentage of the total weight; it requires little in the way of 

 preparation for market and that not expensive; it is well adapted to canning 

 and freezing, as well as to the fresh fish market; it can be prepared for the 

 table in many ways; and the demand so far seems unlimited. Biologically 

 it is enormously fecund, reaches commercial size in the same year in which 

 it is hatched, and appears to subsist on the most prevalent of aquatic foods, 

 the organic detritus and its immediate derivatives on the bottom. 



The Blue Crab, another crustacean, is, in a more modest way, a growing 

 resource of the South, and has many of the favorable biological and eco- 

 nomic characteristics of the shrimp. Its potentials do not appear to be as 

 large, its habitat is more restricted, and more labor is required to catch 

 and prepare it for market. It should be very resistant to exploitation. Its 

 yield of edible flesh, however, is small in proportion to its bulk and its cost 

 rather deceptively high. As soft crabs, the species has made no progress 



