BUREAU OF FISHERIES 31) 
DIVISION OF FISHERY INDUSTRIES 
The Division of Fishery Industries is concerned with the activi- 
ties and welfare of the commercial fisheries and fishery industries. 
Its work includes the planning, supervising, and conducting of: (1) 
The Fishery Market News Service; (2) fishery statistical surveys; 
(3) investigations in fishery technology; and (4) investigations in 
fishery economics and marketing, including the administration of 
the Fishery Cooperative Marketing Act. 
Studies and investigations are planned particularly to promote 
the more orderly marketing of fish and shellfish, to develop com- 
mercial uses for little-known or little-used fishery products, and new 
uses for the better-known species and commodities, and to improve 
the technology of capture, manufacture, handling, and marketing. 
This work tends toward the elimination of waste in marketing, and 
greater utilization of the fishery harvest. Consequently, it accom- 
plishes an important function in conservation. This is imperative, 
since obviously haphazard and wasteful marketing and technological 
practices result in a greater drain on the resource for the same vol- 
ume entering consumption. Thus, the types of activities conducted 
are of great value in maintaining the important food and industrial 
resource represented by fish and other aquatic forms, particularly 
in view of the possibility of a national emergency. 
FISHERY MARKET NEWS SERVICE 
Essentially, the fishery market news service constitutes the ex- 
change of market information between the fishermen or producers 
in the fishing areas, and the middlemen in the terminal markets, with 
the Bureau of Fisheries acting as the exchange agency; that is, the 
agency for collecting and disseminating market information. The 
Market News Service now maintains six field offices from. which 
daily reports are issued. These are located at New York, N. Y.; 
Boston, Mass.; Chicago, Ill.; Seattle, Wash.; Jacksonville, Fla.; 
and New Orleans, La. The locations of these field offices have 
been so carefully chosen that the current data collected and dissem- 
inated through them cover some phase of the marketing of about 
one-half of the 3,000,000,000 pounds of fish and shellfish taken annu- 
ally for food in the United States and Alaska. 
New York City was selected for the first Market News office, 
since it is the center of this country’s most important consuming 
area and the market to which fishery commodities are shipped from 
all parts of this Nation and from foreign countries. This market 
exercises considerable influence over production and prices of fishery 
products throughont, the country. 
