220 FISHERY INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS 



eral area — Central and Southern California — often by the same boats, 

 canned in the same canneries, and the cannery wastes go to the same 

 drying plants. Thus the meals made from these species rarely have a 

 separate identity and are, in fact, not infrequently mixed with tuna meal. 

 All are now minor sources of raw material, compared to tuna, although 

 prior to 1945 the California pilchard was a major source of fish meal, 

 annual production averaging 85,000 tons. This dropped to less than 200 

 tons in 1953 and has never approached its former status since that time. 



Ground Fish. Otter trawlers and draggers working the ''Banks" off 

 New England land a number of species usually categorized as ''ground 

 fish." Included in this grouping are haddock, cod, the flat fishes or floun- 

 ders, ocean perch, whiting, pollock, cusk, and hake. Most of this catch 

 is dressed or filleted, and a portion of the waste from these operations 

 goes to the meal plants. These are species with a comparatively low oil 

 content, in contrast to the others afore-mentioned, so that only meal, 

 often called "white fish" meal, is produced from this source. In recent 

 years, there has been considerable competition for this raw material with 

 most of it now going into canned pet food or being ground and frozen for 

 fur animal feeding. 



Industrial Fish. This name is now given to the material formerly more 

 descriptively but inelegantly known as "trash" fish. It is properly con- 

 sidered with ground fish because these are bottom fish species caught with 

 similar gear-drags and trawl nets. The species are mostly low in oil and, 

 as with ground fish waste, much of the present production now goes for 

 canned pet foods and fur animal feeding. 



The name "trash" fish was derived from the fact that these were species 

 unwanted for food when caught in the same trawls with the cod and had- 

 dock and, therefore, destined to be washed back overboard. In southern 

 waters huge quantities of trash fish were brought up with the shrimp 

 trawls. Now no longer unwanted, a considerable fleet of small draggers or 

 trawlers fish especially for these non-food fish species. In the Gulf of 

 Mexico small croakers, spot, butter fish, and half a dozen other species 

 make up about 98 per cent of the catch. Although used as food fish in 

 Atlantic waters, in the Gulf these species rarely grow to more than five 

 inches long and a few ounces in weight and thus are grouped as industrial 

 (i.e., trash) species^^ 



In New England waters skates and rays, sea robins, sculpins, and other 

 non-food species make up most of the industrial fish catch. As indicated, 

 only a small part of this catch now goes to the dryers, although some has 

 been digested to make "homogenized condensed" fish or "liquid fish" for 

 mixture with some vegetable base meal. 



Miscellaneous Sources. Salmon cannery waste has at times been uti- 

 lized for meal and oil, though hardly economically feasible under present 



