464 MARINE FISHERIES OF NORTH CAROLINA 



production of the State. About five per cent of North Carolina's produce 

 (half of it shrimp) is shipped to Fulton Market, New York; an unknown 

 amount to Norfolk and other markets. On the other hand, fish products 

 imported from Chesapeake States, New York, New England, and Florida 

 are regularly found in restaurants, hotel and institutional dining rooms, 

 and retail chain stores all over the State. The finfish product of North 

 Carolina is shipped in crude form, round or whole, on ice, shrimp beheaded 

 and oysters shucked; no filleting is done in the State, nor any freezing of 

 standardized packaged products (which are growing in importance all over 

 the country and are invading the State from elsewhere) ; the State's produc- 

 tion is in highly discontinuous supply, the bulk of it in the fall. 



Such, briefly stated, is the fishery industry of North Carolina. It is a 

 small industry; it is in a part of the State which needs income; the menhaden 

 industry is a valuable addition; but the food fish part of the industry shows 

 no sign of sustained improvement; in the past seventy years it has not 

 responded to changes for the better which might have caused it to improve, 

 and there appears to be no reason to expect anything to happen spon- 

 taneously to make it improve now. 



How can the fisheries of the State be so developed as to make a larger 

 economic contribution to the welfare of the coastal communities? 



Many of the handicaps and needs of the State's fisheries are common to 

 the fisheries of the whole country, though some occur in aggravated form 

 in North Carolina. 



The one thing that will without fail benefit the entire fishing community 

 is to increase demand for fishery products. Quantitative data concerning our 

 markets are meagre and old, but it is well known that demand is greater 

 in large cities than in small towns and in the country, and it is greater on 

 the seaboard and around the Great Lakes than in the interior generally. 

 It is greater in regions whtre populous religious denominations require fish 

 on fast days. If the regions which are now light consumers of fish (such as 

 up-State North Carolina and neighboring States) could be brought up to 

 the per capita consumption of the heaviest consuming regions, the total 

 demand for fish would be enormously increased, the aggregate (if not the 

 individual) income of fishermen would be increased and the fishing com- 

 munities would receive a transfushion of economic prosperity. The most 

 dependable formula for improving demand is to produce a better product 

 at lower cost, efficiently distributed, effectively and persuasively presented 

 to more of the people more of the time. 



The problem in North Carolina which appears to transcend all others in 

 importance is that of the discontinuity of supply of fish over the four 

 seasons and from day to day, complicated by the geographical separateness 

 or disunity of the source of fish in the State. The occurrence of the principal 



