CHILE 



There is a Commercial Fishermen's Syndicate in Tocopilla 

 and Iquique. When I arrived in 1941 they had been having 

 tough going for there weren't many fish around at the time. 

 After I had been there for about two weeks and had lost 

 the first five I had hooked, the syndicate came to me and 

 asked me to turn over my fish. I still have the letter in my 

 fishing jacket. Considering that I had not caught a single one 

 at that time, I thought the man had a rare sense of humor. 

 However, I gave him the first one I did catch and from then 

 on he was always at my side when I arrived at the mole in 

 the evening and when I went out the following day. That 

 fish of mine had made it possible for the syndicate to pay 

 its government tax. During that trip, in addition to several 

 more donations to the syndicate, we gave away fish to the 

 townspeople, the hospital, the mines up in the Pampa and 

 our friends— more than 6000 pounds of swordfish which 

 dressed down for the table at more than a ton. 



The commercial men receive only about three pesos a kilo 

 for swordfish, about one peso a kilo for marlin— a far cry 

 from the prices paid North Atlantic fishermen who get from 

 ten to fifty cents a pound for their catches— sometimes more, 

 depending on the time and season. Small as the return is, how- 

 ever, swordfish bring the Chilean fishermen better prices than 

 any other kind, so it is the ambition of all of them to become 

 swordfishermen. 



In Peru the commercials get twenty dollars a fish for any 

 size and about three hundred soles for every black marlin. Of 

 course there are very few boats engaged in the business com- 

 pared with the myriad in Nova Scotia and American waters. 

 I doubt if there are twenty-five out of Tocopilla and fifty out 



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