Table 11. — Taiwan: Tuna catch by species, 

 1948, 1953, and 1957. 

 (in millions of pounds) 



1/ Breakdown by species not available. 

 2/ Data not available. 



CATCH BY OCEAN 



To understand and follow the production 

 trends in the various world oceans, it is 

 useful to have information on the catch by 

 species by ocean. Such information is scarce 

 because catches are usually tabulated by the 

 country of origin with no record of the ocean 

 from which the catch was taken. This is par- 

 ticularly true with respect to adjacent areas 

 of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic and 

 likewise the catches in the Indian and Pacific 

 ic Oceans by the Japanese. 



Pacific Ocean 



Because of the difficulty and confu- 

 sion of defining catches by country of origin 

 rather than by ocean, it was quite difficult 

 to obtain data for the Pacific Ocean. For 

 some countries bordering on the Pacific, data 

 on the tuna are not available at all. For 

 the most part, the total landings of such 

 countries are small and eliminating them from 

 consideration does not change the general 

 trends and conclusions. 



For a number of other countries the 

 tuna landings are not listed by species and 

 in some instances even include mackerel and 

 spear fishes. For certain countries, e.g. 

 Formosa, the skipjack landings have been 

 approximated according to estimates of 

 species composition given in the literature. 

 In others, such as Australia, total tuna 

 landings have been included in the bluefin 

 tuna group inasmuch as a major part of the 

 landings consist of bluefin. In other cases 

 where it is suspected that mackerel landings 

 nake up a large portion of the total tuna, 

 mackerel and spear fish landings, e.g. 

 Thailand and Philippines, such landings have 

 been omitted entirely. The Japanese data for 

 the Pacific are estimates provided to the 

 Bureau by the Konagawa Prefectural Fisheries 



Experimental Station in Kanagawa, Japan. In 

 general the Japanese statistics do not per- 

 mit an accurate breakdown of landings made 

 in the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans. 

 Accordingly, that portion of the Japanese 



catch assignable to the Pacific Ocean was 



based on estimates. 



The principal published sources of 

 information were: FAO Publication on World 

 Landings of Marine Products, by A. i». Ander- 

 son, et al., 1952 (Special Scientific Re- 

 port—Fisheries No. 10ii), S. Shapiro, 19k9 

 (Fishery Leaflet 297), Japanese journals, a 

 and unpublished Japanese data received 

 through correspondence. 



Figure 17 shows Pacific -wide tuna 

 landings and indicates the proportion of the 

 catch taken by the Japanese for the years 

 1937, 1938, 1939 and 19h0 and the years 1950 

 through 1957. Considering the various spe- 

 cies and comparing the two periods, 1937 to 

 191*0 and 1950 to 1957, it is apparent that 

 the skipjack landings show the smallest in- 

 crease of all the species (approximately 2lj 

 percent). 



225 



200 

 trs 



1 50 



125 



100 



75 



50 



25 



I ° 



%, 75 

 ^ 50 

 fe 25 



S3 



%>& 

 § 100 

 £ 75 



50 

 25 





 50 

 25 





 50 

 25 







SKIPJACK 



AISACORE 



Eiillill 



Mil llllllll 



si an 



SWiHN 



.■■■■Bill 



'37 '3t '39 '10 '50 '51 '52 '53 '5* '55 '56 '57 



Figure 17. — Pacific-wide tuna landings (and 

 proportion of catch by the Japanes) 

 (1937-40 and 1950-57). 



28 



