204 U. S. BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
for the purpose of determining the relative proportion of edible and 
inedible material in food fish taken commercially on the Pacific coast 
and to determine the ‘‘proximate’’ chemical composition of the edible 
portion. The measurements include percent dressed weight, percent 
trimmings, percent viscera, percent liver, percent flesh, percent bone, 
percent skin based on the round weight of the fish, the proportion of 
the dressed weight which is flesh, bone, and skin, and percent mois- 
ture, fat, protein, and ash in the ‘edible portion. Numerous samples 
of each of 22 different species of fish have been analyzed to date. 
These are: Albacore tuna, sea bass, gray cod, ‘‘lingeod,” red cod, 
rock cod, lamprey eel, starry flounder, halibut, herring, sea perch, 
pilchard, orange rockfish, sablefish, chum salmon, pink salmon, silver 
salmon, sockeye salmon, roe shad, English “sole,” king ‘“‘sole,” and 
turbot. The analyses are being continued and the data will be assem- 
bled in report form. 
CANNING AQUATIC PRODUCTS 
For the past several years one of our technologists has been engaged 
in the development of methods for home or noncommercial canning of 
fish. Several publications, described in previous annual reports of 
this Division, have been published by the Bureau on this subject. 
The work on this project has now been completed and a final report 
has been prepared for publication. This report will include recom- 
mended methods of canning many fishery products not discussed in 
previous publications on the subject. These methods are designed 
primarily for the housewife or for the canning of fish in small quantities 
in the home, and cover enough species of fish so that all sections of this 
country where fish are taken may benefit from the results of this work. 
The species of fish and shellfish for which home canning methods have 
been developed, are: Alewives, herring, alewife or river herring roe, 
carp, suckers, fish roe, mackerel, lake trout, whitefish, mullet, mackerel 
(ready cooked salt-mackerel style), smoked mackerel and mullet, 
salmon, shad, spiced fish, king mackerel, mackerel and swordfish 
(tuna style), whiting, whole clams, minced clams, oysters, Atlantic 
and Gulf coast crab, Dungeness or Pacific coast crab, devilled crab, 
crab gumbo, crab soup (Norfolk style), shrimp (wet-pack method), 
fish chowder, New England clam chowder, and Manhattan or Coney 
Island clam chowder. 
Studies on the canning of the blue crab were continued, with the 
preparation of experimental packs under commercial conditions and 
on a semicommercial scale. Other experimental packs were made to 
confirm conclusions reached in the work of the previous year. Exami- 
nation of these packs of crab meat showed no deterioration or dis- 
coloration after a storage of as much as 18 months. We expect to 
publish the results of this work during the coming year. 
As has been discussed in the annual reports of this Division in 
recent years, there has been a considerable demand from the various 
commercial fish-canning industries of the United States for a compre- 
hensive manual describing existing methods of canning fish and shell- 
fish in the United States, thus bringing this information up-to-date 
with any recommendations for improvements that a technical survey 
might reveal. Surveys of the fish-canning industries of the South 
Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico areas, and of the Pacific coast, were made 
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