ECONOMICS OF THE FISHERIES 363 



with crew, and of exercising managerial remote control. Fishing is tradi- 

 tionally rewarded by sharing the proceeds of the catch among crews, 

 captains, and owners, and manufacturing labor is traditionally compensated 

 by wages. To devise an equitable system of risks and rewards where a 

 hunting expedition is to be mixed up with an industrial manufacturing 

 operation would be no simple undertaking. The human problems arising 

 from the crowding of large numbers of men for long periods of time in 

 small quarters with little or no recreation, and with the inevitable conflicts 

 and sicknesses, as well as mechanical and many other kinds of mishaps, 

 constitute a formidable hindrance to an enterprise which requires large 

 capital investment and offers only a narrow margin of profit even if success- 

 ful. Yet herein lie the problems that must be solved if the resources of the 

 sea as a whole are to be fully put to use. The reason why the remote fisheries 

 of the world are not exploited is not to be found in ignorance or unaware- 

 ness on the part of the fish industry, but in the fact that it does not pay 

 to exploit them. As long as all the fish that the markets require can be 

 supplied at the cost of fishing near by, no one is going to distant waters at 

 higher cost to try to supply still more. 



Quantitative Consideration of the Fisheries 



COMPARATIVE MAGNITUDES OF THE FISHERIES 



Presented here are some quantitative data, assembled and calculated from 

 various sources, which are useful in viewing the magnitudes of the fisheries 

 in their proper perspectives and relations to other magnitudes, and necessary 

 to the understanding of the economic position of the fisheries as a whole. 



Land and Sea, World Magnitudes. The production of fish in the world, 

 partly estimated, is 37 billion pounds per year (FAO, 1945); if i5 P^r cent 

 of this is inedible, the remaining 85 per cent or 31.5 billion pounds is human 

 food. The population of the world is about 2.2 billion; the per capita wet 

 weight of whole fish per year is therefore about 14.3 pounds, which may 

 be compared with about 1500 pounds gross weight per capita consumption 

 of all food (1520 in the United States); i.e., as a rough approximation, fish 

 is a little less than one per cent of the total food supply of the world by phys- 

 ical weight. If fish as landed is on the average 40 per cent edible flesh, then 

 the amount available for food would be about 5.6 pounds per capita per year. 

 Fish flesh is about 75 per cent water, 25 per cent solids. On the dry basis, the 

 gross per capita would be 3.6 pounds and net edible 1.4 pounds per year out 

 of the annual 560 pounds dry weight per capita estimated by Harper (1945)- 

 Fish thus supplies about 0.65 per cent of the gross weight, dry basis, of the 

 food of man. Fish contains, on the wet basis, about 18 per cent protein having 



