390 MARINE FISHERIES OF NORTH CAROLINA 



ternal changes in the fisheries (except the improved techniques of market- 

 ing) have had any effect on the total — the decline of the old "salt banker" 

 fisheries, the rise and subsequent decline in halibut and haddock, the de- 

 crease in shad, alewives, oysters, lobster, whitefish, and other Lake species, 

 the increase in the shrimp, tuna, salmon, flounders, crab, whiting, and rose- 

 fish, and the periodic fluctuations in abundance of all or nearly all of them, 

 the introduction of new techniques of capture or the impact of legislation 

 or regulation. These and many other changes are cancelled out in the 

 averages and totals. In the United States and Canada, and apparently in 

 Europe as well, the pattern of behavior of fish production and value is typical 

 of the business cycle. 



Mechanism of Accommodation of Supply to Demand. The historical data 

 of production and values of all food fish in the United States indicate that 

 without any central direction or conscious control, the fisheries contain a 

 self-regulatory mechanism which automatically adjusts and accommodates 

 all the diverse productions just to supply all that can be sold and no more. 



The data also supplies an answer, which will appear below, to the interest- 

 ing question, why, if total food consumption is a constant, or nearly so, is 

 the quantity of fish produced so responsive to the pulse of prosperity and 

 depression? 



Price is the Regulator of How Much, Where, When, and What Kinds of 

 Fish Will Be Produced, but not in the simple manner that might be supposed. 

 Data of sufficient accuracy and immediacy are not generally available (or 

 have not been assembled) to demonstrate the operation of price of fish 

 extensively and throughout the country. However, Herrington (1946) gives 

 an elegant demonstration of the price behavior of cod and haddock in rela- 

 tion to their own volume of production, and in relation to the prices and 

 volume of competing beef cattle, hogs, and eggs. Cod and haddock are staple, 

 non-luxury articles, produced in large quantities the year round, and sold 

 competitively at auction in large organized markets (Boston, etc.), and 

 the transactions are recorded as a continuous series. Herrington demon- 

 strated that short term (quarterly average) prices and quantity of produc- 

 tion of cod and haddock are negatively correlated (r = -o.79)," i.e., prices 

 are up when volume is down, and vice versa. (Fig. 12, reproduced from 

 Herrington.) He found (Fig. 13) little correlation between prices of fish 

 and either the cost-of-living index for food (r = 0.45) or average prices of 

 competing food, cattle, hogs, eggs, (r = 0.48); practically no correlation 

 (r = —0.05) between annual average prices and annual production of cod 

 and haddock (i. e., long term), which is contrary to what might be expected; 



SI. The correlation coefficient, r, varies from i.o perfect positive, to — i.o perfect negative, 

 correlation between two compared variables. Herrington indicates that in these calculations co- 

 efficients or r values of less than 0.50 have little significance. 



