248 SCIENCE IN AFRICA 



through the aquarium below the Colonial Museum. During the 

 last thirty years Professor Gruvel has himself carried out fisheries 

 research along most of the West African coast, especially at Port 

 Etienne and Dakar in French West Africa, the Ivory Coast, 

 Dahomey, parts of the Nigerian coast, Cameroons, Angola, and 

 Capetown, and the list of his published works on the subject is long. 

 An account of the fish industry of the West Coast (191 3) and a 

 paper stressing the importance of fishery development (1934) are 

 included in the bibliography. In addition several of Gruvel's 

 students have studied fisheries in French West and Equatorial 

 Africa, notably Dr. T. Monod, who published in 1928 an exhaus- 

 tive account of the fish industry in the Cameroons, and the late 

 J. Thomas (1925 and 1931), who studied the freshwater fisheries 

 of the Niger and the Chad region. The importance offish as food 

 for native races is stressed in a paper by Gruvel and Petit (1931). 



Port Etienne on the coast of Mauretania is the principal centre 

 of development of fishery on modern lines. Much attention is 

 given to the improvement of curing methods and the value of oil 

 as a by-product. In 1936 a further investigation on a large scale 

 was undertaken into the biology of the coastal and deep waters off 

 Senegal. Professor Belloc, of the Sorbonne, is in charge of the 

 scientific work, and states as a preliminary conclusion that the 

 fishing-grounds in the neighbourhood of Dakar are as rich as those 

 of Port Etienne. A research station has recently been established 

 in the French Cameroons for the development of marine fisheries. 



The manufacture of fish-meal as a native food, originally tried 

 with great success in Indo-China, has recently been introduced to 

 French West Africa, where it is made at Conakry and finds a ready 

 sale. The addition of a correct quantity of salt to the fish before 

 curing is the chief process required, but where salt is difficult to 

 obtain a small addition of spice to powdered fish is effective in 

 preserving it from insects, and is highly acceptable to the native 

 consumer. 



In Morocco and Madagascar much attention is devoted to the 

 commercial possibilities of freshwater fish. In Morocco, at Gruvel's 

 suggestion, a station has been opened at Azron in the Middle Atlas, 

 for the supply of trout eggs to the whole of the Atlas Mountains. 

 There is also a station for industrial pisciculture in this neighbour- 



