STATISTICS 27 



The Pan-Pacific 'Scientific Conference held in Honolulu in 

 August 1920 recommended to the several Governments/ ' that 

 systematic statistics of the fisheries be collected and pub- 

 lished annually, and that such statistics be, as far as possible, 

 uniform in character and in such detail as to methods of fishing 

 and geographical distribution as to make them useful in fisheries 

 administration and conservation. . It is further recommended 

 that the several Governments provide for a joint commission 

 for the arrangement of the details of such statistical compilation.' 



That resolution puts the case for the reform of the North 

 Atlantic fishery statistics very concisely. 



Comjyidsory Statistics 

 But commercial statistics will never be really efficiently 

 compiled until every Government is invested with the right to 

 demand information from the persons who possess it. At one 

 time a feeling prevailed in the fishing industry that to invest 

 authority with such powers would be to give away one's trade 

 secrets — and it may be that at some ports this idea still lingers, 

 though the writer has never met it. Giving evidence before 

 Mr. Tennant's Committee in 1908, Mr. C. Hellyer spoke as 

 follows : ' We think that the time has come when these returns 

 might be made compulsory by the Government giving some 

 fee to the owners for the collection of statistics, and handing 

 them in to a central authority in London, because these matters 

 are considered by the fishermen very private.' He explained 

 ' it would mean clerical work for which they, the owners or 

 salesmen, should be recouped. If we work sixty steamers, to 

 reckon up those returns for all the week would mean keeping 

 a clerk.' Asked whether it would not still be necessary for the 

 Government to have an officer at the port to see that the thing 

 was properly done, he replied : ' I cannot see that, if you will 

 excuse me for saying so. Here you have a steamer landing 

 100 tons of fish, and these fish are being placed out at two 

 o'clock in the morning for sale. You cannot conceive what 

 a large business Hull and Grimsby fishing is. There is no 

 fishery officer with regulated hours who would come at that 

 time when the vessel was discharging to ascertain by his own 

 knowledge what those fish consisted of. He must rely on some- 

 body to give the information to him at second-hand ; therefore 

 it is better to rely upon a responsible person or authority like 

 the owner or salesman to give accurate information, they feel- 

 ing all the time that that would be sacred, and that no other 



' Japan, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the U.S.A., and 

 Hawaii. 



