132 DESCRIPTION OF IMPORTANT FISHERIES AND THEIR PRODUCTS 



A survey made in 1954 revealed that 23 nations were packing sardine- 

 like products from 14 different species of fish and labeling them sardines. 

 The most distinguishing feature that these packs had in common was 

 the style of pack, which seems to bear out that the word sardine may 

 not be a taxonomic concept but one associated with its mode of prepara- 

 tion. The sardine canning industry of the United States is located mainly 

 in California and Maine. The canning of Maine sardines is described in 

 a subsequent section on the herring fisheries. 



The California Sardine (Pilchard) 



The California sardine (pilchard) has played an important role in the 

 development of the California fishing industry, and at one time the 

 landings of sardine exceeded in tonnage the combined catch of all other 

 California fisheries. The sardine fisheries began to soar during the first 

 World War and amounted to 150,000,000 pounds in 1918. From then on 

 the sardine industry grew at a very fast rate and reached its peak in 

 1936 when 1,500,000,000 pounds were landed. By 1944 a rapid decline 

 of the highly expanded sardine industry began, resulting in financial 

 difficulties for fishermen as well as for canners, and this decline has con- 

 tinued since then. Today the California sardine industry is only a shadow 

 of its former self. 



Method of Fishing. The California sardine is now caught almost exclu- 

 sively in purse seines. In the earlier years of the sardine canning industry 

 on the West Coast, lampara nets, similar in nature but smaller than the 

 original Italian lampara, were used in boats of 30 to 50 foot length with 

 a carrying capacity of up to 50 tons. In 1925 the purse seine was intro- 

 duced, after an earlier attempt at its use had proven unpopular. This 

 time the use of this method of fishing for sardines proved successful, and 

 since then purse seining has dominated the sardine fishing industry. 

 Today the fishing for sardine is carried out in large diesel-engined vessels 

 reaching up to 100 feet in length, using purse seines of 300 fathoms 

 length or more, and made of nylon or some other synthetic rot-proof 

 fiber. Vessels of this type naturally can operate over a much larger fish- 

 ing area and, with modern navigational equipment and improved fishing 

 gear at their disposal, the efficiency of the fleet has greatly improved. 



The sardine is usually seined at night during complete darkness. This 

 is because a school of sardine may conveniently be located in darkness 

 by the phosphorescent glow produced by the movements of the sardines 

 near the surface. It has become customary for the fishermen not to go 

 sardine fishing the last two days before full moon and the first two days 

 after, as these moonlit nights usually do not provide a long enough period 

 of darkness for the fishermen to locate the sardine schools. 



