378 MARINE FISHERIES OF NORTH CAROLINA 



the years 1887-1889 and at very low prices; by the time of the next canvass 

 in 1897 they had declined to less than one million pounds. In interpolation 

 after 1889 their influence continues with diminishing force to 1897, depress- 

 ing average prices of all fish and increasing the apparent quantity of product 

 per fisherman. It would be desirable to remove this item from the data if the 

 number of fishermen who produced it were known. No adjustment for this 

 item was made in the tabulation of all fishery products, but seaweeds are of 

 course excluded from the tabulation of food fish. 



Bait, like seed oysters, is not a marketable product of the fisheries, but an 

 item of cost of production which should be removed for a proper economic 

 showing. In early years (prior to the coming of the steam trawler in 1905) 

 it was an item of large volume and low price, but diminished steadily to rela- 

 tive unimportance in the later period. Bait is not separately shown in the 

 original records and therefore cannot be removed or estimated with any 

 accuracy. No correction was made in any of the tables herein for bait. 



Salt fish for years prior to 1908, where separately shown, was added in 

 all the original reports as salted weight, in with fresh weights, to arrive at 

 totals. In 1908, for the first time, salt fish was converted to, and added into 

 the totals as fresh weights. In some years and regions it is not separately 

 shown, and in no case have we found in the early statistical reports factors 

 for converting salted to fresh weights, though factors for some of the species 

 were in later years published by the Government agency; nor is it always 

 clear in the original reports whether the salted fish is a product of shore 

 manufacture or a primary product of the fishermen. In the early years (1887 

 and well into the 1890's) salt fish was of great importance; in 1887 it con- 

 stituted more than 20 per cent, as salt weight, of all New England fish and if 

 converted to fresh weight and the total adjusted accordingly, it would con- 

 stitute well over a third. In the Chesapeake, South Atlantic (chiefly alewives 

 and mullet), and Pacific (cod and salmon) regions it may have been about 

 20 per cent of the total. It began to decline even before the steam trawler 

 appeared, and was practically extinct by 1920. During its day it was sold 

 (much of it in the export market) at prices which if converted to the fresh 

 weight basis were much cheaper than fresh fish, and involved costs which 

 are not now ascertainable, but on the salt weight basis it was slightly higher 

 per pound than fresh. It could not have been sold fresh, if at all, without 

 greatly depressing fresh fish prices. If we convert salt weights by estimation 

 to fresh, we distort prices; if we do not convert we convey a false biological 

 picture of the yield of the water. For the Pacific, in one of the summary 

 series prepared by the Bureau of Fisheries,^' and used herein, all salt fish 

 had been converted to fresh weight; otherwise, salt weights are not herein 

 converted to fresh weights in either series of the main tables. 



47. Rept. Comm. 1931, p. 472. 



