452 U. S. BUREAU OF FISHERIES 


| Equivalent 



} neue weight of 
Variety tee a | | meats as 
RE ESTES with Phat given in 
| table 
Oysters: 
Native— | Pounds Pounds 
Wasbinetont 22 22o- oe. Be eS ae eee PACK case ee 120 | 24 
Oregon ‘and: California S2~ =e oe oe a eee ee dosz=-et=-~ 120 | 18 
Eastern and Japaneseo= sss eee ee re ue ee ee Bushelaes=-veee a= 70 if 
Clams | 
Hard'and cockle: ses 2) ees ae een eee SE eas ote d@ercte Sey 60 & 
SOft eee ee a a ere ee em ee ee ae tes owe Suns eee | 60 10. 
Pisin 08 ee er ee a 8 EO gees Pee Le Dozens= = sees 24 
RGZOL 28 cata a nos shee ens ete ee eo Bee a eee Sack sweewee =< See 100 36- 
MUIXGd= =e ae Se he Ne ee ee ee ) Busheles. See eee: | 60 9 
Scallops se a ee ee ee Ee ose ce == Sas 40 6 
IMGussels 8 23 sc eee ok Se aoe ee Se a ee ee ee lee G0 2-3. se | 60 10: 
(A BlONG 228 eee Sees se Sa eee ee ee ne Sy ee ee he Dozens sees eeee 50 10 

It should be pointed out also that not all of the statistics in this 
section are strictly comparable. Those for 1922 were collected in a 
canvass by the bureau’s agents, and those for 1923, 1924, and 1925 
were collected largely by the States (which require reports from the 
various fishing operators) and supplemented with canvassing by the 
bureau’s agents (see explanation, p. 419). 
As bearing on the comparability of the statistics collected by various 
agencies, the records of California for the year 1922, as collected by 
the California Fish and Game Commission and by the Bureau of 
Fisheries, may be of significance. The statistics collected by the 
State agency were secured by means of duplicates of sales slips, which 
all fish dealers are required to transmit to the State authorities. This 
gives a bookkeeping record for compilation and must be considered 
as highly accurate, unless there is some loss through illegibility of slips 
and failure to transmit slips to the State. We believe these losses to. 
be negligible. The statistics collected by the bureau were taken by 
means of a canvass by field agents, who derived most of their informa- 
tion direct from fishermen and wholesalers and used the State com- 
pilations to a certain extent. The use of the State figures was limited 
by the necessity of collecting the data on the catches of each type of 
gear and each vessel engaged in fishing. As such classification was 
not available from State compilations, the information was sought 
ere from operators and consisted largely of estimates of their 
catches. 
From the table given herewith, it may be seen that the totals differ 
by about 1 per cent. The differences of various items exceed 11 per 
cent in only three cases. Two of these (the carp and catfish) are 
differences that probably arose from the restriction of the bureau’s 
canvass to the lower portions of the rivers while the State statistics 
included the catch from the upper portions of the rivers. The third 
large difference (in mullet) may be due to confusion of names or to 
exclusion of the Salton Sea statistics from the State tabulations. 
The well-known staple fishes were reported in substantially the same 
amounts by both agencies. In many cases the comparison is closer 
than would be expected from independent collections of data, and, 
indeed, the two collections were not wholly independent, for the State 
figures were used where possible by the bureau’s agents. On the 
whole, it may be concluded that the statistics are in sufficient agree- 
Se ae OA) Sa RP Nt I te el SBihiggtia ar 
