CHAPTER XI 



Fish and Fishermen 



FISH have little interest in man and little in common with 

 him. When the two meet, it is usually man who has made 

 the advances which bring them together. The old adage, 

 " ^Dog bites man is not news' but 'Man bites dog is news,' " 

 must be reversed for fish. Men bite fish millions of times every 

 day — in fact, in some islands they live on little else — ^but 

 when a fish bites a man it calls for headlines. 



Man's interest in fish has two major phases: food and 

 sport. Their relative importance varies between individuals 

 and nations. To one man, fishing may be an insufferable 

 bore, while to his brother it may be a consuming passion. 

 To a nation like the United States, where food is so abundant 

 that at times crops are plowed under, fish as a form of nour- 

 ishment is relatively unimportant. To a nation like Japan, 

 which has never been able to produce within its own boun- 

 daries enough to feed its people, fish is a major item of diet, 

 and the oceans have been studied and explored and ex- 

 ploited to keep the nation from starving. Since fish are not 

 equally distributed throughout the length and breadth and 

 depth of the seas, but are concentrated in the comparatively 

 shallow waters around the margins of the continents, Japa- 

 nese fishermen have been led far from home in their quest, 

 and have in the past invaded such areas as the salmon fish- 

 eries of Siberia and Alaska, thus adding to the frictions 

 which sometimes lead to wars. 



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