prices offish products at different marketing levels 

 are collected. Over 60% offish products consumed 

 in this country are imported. Almost all imported 

 fish products are frozen and priced lower than 

 domestic fresh products. To avoid the distortion of 

 measurement of the fisherman's share of the 

 consumer's dollar only fresh fish prices and canned 

 fish prices are used in this study except where a large 

 portion of the domestic catch is frozen.-' 



Ex-vessel prices^ are published by the Regional 

 Market News Offices of the National Marine 

 Fisheries Service. 



Processor's prices are calculated from the quan- 

 tity and value statistics published in the annual re- 

 ports of Canned Fishery Products, Packaged 

 Fishery Products, and Processed Fishery Products 

 issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service. 



Wholesale prices for salmon and halibut steaks are 

 based on New York market prices; for canned tuna, 

 they are averages of different brands reported by San 

 Diego brokers and cannery representatives: for can- 

 ned salmon, they are confined to pink salmon prices 

 at Seattle; for shellfish, they are collected from the 

 cities near where they are landed (e.g., Brownsville. 

 Tex.; Hampton and Norfolk, Va.; Portland, Me.; 

 and Boston, Mass.); and for groundfish, they are 

 adjusted from Boston quotations of prices to primary 

 wholesalers. 



New York City is the only place where retail 

 prices for a number of fresh fish products have been 

 published. Price series are available from 1949 to the 

 present, except that one or two series were discon- 

 tinued and a new series started in later years. The 

 series are still relatively complete so far as the avail- 

 ability of fresh fish prices is concerned. Shellfish 

 retail prices, with the exception of shrimp, are col- 

 lected from marketing service offices of different 

 state governments in or near the cities where 

 wholesale prices are gathered. 



Although the author recognizes that some of these 

 price series are imperfect and that biases may distort 

 the findings, these are the best data available. Be- 

 cause of this, adjustments were made as described 



■' About 849^ of ocean perch landings, 199?- of haddock. 67'^ of 

 shrimp, 2195- of sea scallop, and only 2-49f of cod and flounder 

 were frozen in 1971. Some of their frozen prices are also taken for 

 comparison in this study. Canned tuna prices are mixed for 

 domestic and imported products. Canned salmon prices are for 

 domestic products. 



^ Ex-vessel prices are the prices agreed upon between the seller. 

 the fisherman, and the buyer, the wholesaler or processor, at the 

 dockside for the exchange of certain amount of fresh fish landed 

 by the fisherman on a per pound basis. 



below. Other people using these price series will 

 need to evaluate the sources to find out what is 

 included and how they were reported. 



Adjustment of Price Data 



To measure the fisherman's share in the retail 

 price, the ex-vessel price must be expressed on a 

 comparable weight basis with the retail price. In our 

 study, the ex-vessel price is converted to the value of 

 a quantity equivalent to the final form sold to the 

 consumer. For example, if fish are landed in round 

 form and sold to consumers in fillet form, ex-vessel 

 prices of that species are converted from a round- 

 weight to a fillet-weight basis, by a conversion factor 

 calculated for that species. 



Prices at all levels are further adjusted to account 

 for general price inflation. This is done by expressing 

 all prices on the basis of the 1967 price level. Thus, 

 prices of different fishery products at the four levels 

 are divided by the implicit price deflator (for nondur- 

 able goods) with 1967 as the base year. The deflated 

 prices are used in tracing the trend movements at the 

 four levels in the price spread charts presented in 

 Figures 2 to 14. For the tables, in the calculation of 

 fisherman's share and markups at different levels, 

 actual prices are used (Appendix Tables 3 to 15). 



Shrinkage and spoilage of fish products vary at 

 different levels. Prices could be adjusted according 

 to the ratio of shrinkage and spoilage losses esti- 

 mated by studies made by the former Marketing 

 Division of our Service in 1966. They will not be 

 adjusted for such losses in the present study until 

 more accurate figures for shrinkage and spoilage are 

 established. 



Processor's costs could be adjusted downward if 

 the value of their byproducts were known. Further 

 studies should be made in this respect. 



Behavior of the Retail Food Market 



To assess the markups of prices at different levels, 

 a distinction in characteristic should be drawn be- 

 tween a retail food market on the one hand and har- 

 vesting, processing, and wholesaling of food prod- 

 ucts as a group on the other. A retail food store is a 

 multiproduct firm handling thousands of food and 

 nonfood items at the same time, whereas the latter 

 handle a small number of products in different sea- 

 sons of the year. The demand for any product taken 

 by itself in the multiproduct retail firms is very in- 

 elastic and prices tend to vary widely among differ- 

 ent stores, whereas the opposite is true among the 



