ECONOMICS OF THE FISHERIES 461 



ability is the need for dependable quality standards and grading. The 

 establishment of certainly the more elementary forms of standardization, 

 such as that of size grading, and the separation of species is essential in 

 good merchandising. Unfortunately, a good many complaints were heard 

 among the retailers, and especially institutions and restaurants, that the 

 goods received were not only not dependable as to quality, but were not 

 standardized as to size or even the identity of the species in the shipment. 

 Market Information. There appear to be no facilities for communication 

 of market information between the sources of supply and the distributing 

 markets in North Carolina. There are in the State (1948) only four members 

 of the National Fisheries Institute, the only trade association in the United 

 States which undertakes to represent the fisheries industries in all of their 

 branches. There are no regular or associate members at all in North Carolina 

 of the Oyster Institute of North America, which was organized in 1935 by 

 the Oyster Growers and Dealers Association of North America, Inc. There 

 is no State or local trade paper or trade association through which informa- 

 tion can be disseminated concerning abundance, scarcity, or prices of North 

 Carolina seafoods, or of any other seafoods. There being no local trade 

 associations, there are of course no forums or media through which fisher- 

 men and dealers can meet for discussion of their common problems and of 

 course no organized representation of the fisheries interests in matters legis- 

 lative and regulatory. Such information as is obtained apparently is com- 

 municated by telephone or telegraph from the markets at Norfolk, Balti- 

 more, New York, etc., and from Florida. Price lists sent by mail have little 

 meaning concerning the current State production or demand. No sources of 

 information are available concerning the quantity or value of seafoods 

 brought into North Carolina or shipped out to other States. 



Concluding Comments and Recommendations 



Although nature has endowed North Carolina, in the sounds and on the 

 offshore continental shelf, with an excellent physical setting for a good 

 though perhaps not great fishery, the State has not made any progress to 

 speak of in increasing the total quantity and value of its food fisheries since 

 our first record in 1880; the only important progress has been in the 

 menhaden fishery. The average annual production of food fish in the twenty- 

 year period 1921-1940 was less than it was in the period 1887-1908, and 

 while the average price for the total production of food fish rose to 5deld 

 26 per cent more dollars in the late period, those dollars would only buy 21 

 per cent less of commodities generally than would the proceeds of sale of 

 the total production of the earlier period. Even the menhaden fishery, which 

 has come into existence mainly since 1908, has not been sufficient to bring 



