FISHERY INDUSTRIES OF THE UNITED STATES, 1933 



235 



CONVERSION FACTORS 



It is the policy of the Bureau to show the detailed catch fifj:ures of 

 all products in pounds for the sake of uniformity and for puri)oses 

 of comparison. Following such a policy presents xory definite prob- 

 lems. In the case of fish there is little difficulty since in very rare 

 instances are such products reported in units of measure other than 

 pounds. For shellfish, however, the units of measure may be bush- 

 els, sacks, barrels, or thousands of shellfish, gallons of meat, etc. 

 These many units make standardization difficult, but when coupled 

 with the wide variation in the requirements or definition of some of 

 these units in the various States the problem becomes even more 

 complex. 



All bivalve mollusks are reported in pounds of meats in the de- 

 tailed catch tables presented in this report. In addition there is pre- 

 sented a supplementary table for each section on the production in 

 bushels. These supplementary tables also give the production of 

 certain other shellfish, such as crabs, in number. 



Oysters. — Probably the greatest problem in presentation of fishery 

 statistics in uniform units of measure is in the case of oysters. Usu- 

 ally the production of oysters on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts is re- 

 ported to Bureau agents in bushels and prior to the data obtained for 

 the year 1930 conversion from bushels to pounds of meats was effected 

 on the basis of a uniform yield of 7 pounds of meat to the bushel. 

 There follows a table which gives the results of a study of the measures 

 used for oysters in the various States and of the average yields per 

 bushel. This table presents the factors that have been used in the 

 oyster statistics given in this report. 



Measures and yields of oysieis, 1932 



Other mollusks. — The following table shows the conversion factors 

 for various mollusks other than oysters used in this report. 



