ECONOMICS OF THE FISHERIES 431 



butterfish, carp, clams, crabs, croakers, flounders, king whiting, menhaden, 

 mullet, oysters, Spanish mackerel, spot, sea trout (squeteague), and striped 

 bass. It does not appear likely that nature would be so obliging as to bring 

 about the peaks of biological abundance in all of these species in years when 

 business is unusually good. The conspicuous cases of persistent change are 

 downward in alewives, shad, and scallops; upward in catfish, crabs, croak- 

 ers, flounder, harvestfish, shrimp, and spot. The others hold about steady. 

 Considering the ability of North Carolina to produce fish when the market 

 wants them, it appears that abundance of fish (in those months of the year 

 when they are present at all) is hardly the limiting factor to the magnitude 

 and money value of the State's fishing industry. 



Comparison of Prices by Species in North Carolina and Elsewhere. In 

 order to ascertain how North Carolina's fishery products compare in quan- 

 tities, values, and prices (to fishermen) with the same species produced 

 outside the State, data have been compiled for eight species and presented 

 in Table 26. Limited though the data are, they clearly show that studies 

 of data more finely subdivided in time and place, i.e., for subdivisions of a 

 year and for smaller localities, can be significantly revealing in a number 

 of ways. They show that in shad, flounders, and soft shell crabs, North 

 Carolina fishermen have consistently received a higher price than the aver- 

 age of all that was produced elsewhere. In the case of the shad and soft 

 crabs this difference is undoubtedly in the season of abundance — North 

 Carolina is able to offer these products before they become plentiful as the 

 season advances further north, but it should also be noted that the North 

 Carolina production of shad shrank from 16 per cent of all shad in 1890 

 and 1908 to 10 per cent in 1930 and 8 per cent in 1939; the greatest shrink- 

 age in production occurred in the season of normally highest price; the 

 price behavior of shad was therefore somewhat better in North Carolina than 

 it was for the country as a whole. 



In earlier years the State received proportionately more for mullet, but 

 in later years this advantage seems to have been lost (perhaps because of 

 earlier salting and later discontinuance of salting) ; the price of hard crab 

 is about the same as the national average. In the cases of bluefish and 

 oyster, the prices have been, from the beginning of our record, decisively 

 and consistently to the disadvantage of the State. North Carolina's per- 

 centage of the total national production of oysters is inconsequential, and 

 the season is shorter — later beginning and earlier ending than that of the 

 more northerly states; the volume of bluefish production is characteristically 

 erratic, the State's part varying from 10 to 25 per cent of the national total. 

 Since about 1908 North Carolina has received about the national average 

 price for a very small percentage of the total production of shrimp and 

 hard crabs or crabmeat. 



