362 MARINE FISHERIES OF NORTH CAROLINA 



is aggravated by the perishability of the product. Latent fisheries at still 

 more remote places in the world which might add substantially to the world's 

 food supply are little or not at all exploited. Various proposals have been 

 made, and some of them tried, to fillet, package, freeze, can, and otherwise 

 manufacture or process at sea, to provide "mother" or transport vessels to 

 service fishing vessels at sea and transport their produce to market, and in 

 various other ways to ameliorate the difficulties deriving from remoteness 

 and perishability. Unfortunately most of the experience in this direction 

 has turned out to be disappointing, for a variety of reasons which cannot 

 be here reviewed in detail. 



In the case of "mother" ships to supply trawlers or other vessels at sea 

 and to collect and transport their produce to market, there are to be con- 

 sidered the technical difficulties of transferring fuel, ice, and fish from one 

 vessel to another in all kinds of weather at sea even if it can be demon- 

 strated that, on the average, the value of the additional fish caught in the 

 increased fishing time of the trawlers is not outweighed by the cost of the 

 transport vessel and crew. In some remote fisheries, such as those for tuna 

 where the product is of relatively high value and the shore industry based 

 on it is substantially profitable, the refrigerated vessels can be considered 

 as economically justifiable transportation not otherwise available. There 

 seem to be few fisheries having such characteristics. 



In the case of proposals to fillet, package, and freeze, or simply to freeze, 

 at sea it should be understood that a trawler (and nearly any other kind of 

 fishing vessel) is a highly specialized implement designed on the basis of 

 long experience for the sole purpose of catching fish. If it must also perform 

 these other operations it must be a larger and more expensive vessel to 

 accommodate the additional motive power, fuel, refrigerating compressors 

 and freezing equipment, packaging machinery, materials and supplies, stor- 

 age spaces, larger crew and dining and living quarters. Such a vessel is large 

 and poorly maneuverable, and as a fishing vessel it is inferior to the standard 

 trawler; as a portable factory and crew it is idle when fish are not caught, 

 and has none of the advantages of mass production. Unless the operations 

 are expanded to manufacture fish meal which now seems out of the question, 

 the offal must be dumped as waste. 



The large factory ship of the "hen and chickens" type, i.e., a large fac- 

 tory, storage, and dormitory ship attended and supplied by a fleet of smaller 

 fishing vessels, does not have a good history of experience. The Japanese 

 operated floating canneries for crab and salmon, but European experience 

 in halibut fishing and freezing in Davis Straits west of Greenland was 

 financially a failure. 



In all such operations — trawlers, mother ships, and floating factories — 

 among the difficulties are those of finding a satisfactory basis of settling 



