Aberdeen Fishery Statistics. 31 



The following are most important, or most obvious, lessons 

 brought out by these Tables : — 



1. The total quantities of trawled fish landed in 1916 were only 

 30 per cent, of those of 1912. PUit, 



2. The total value of this reduced catch of 1916 was withifi 9 per 

 cent, of the whole earnings of 1912. It follows therefore that 



3. The average price per cwt. of the trawled fish landed and sold 

 in 1916 was just about three times that obtained in 1912. 



4. While the total value of the catch did not, strictly speaking, 

 remain constant from year to year, there was a tendency all the while 

 (so to speak) for it to do so. In short, we have even under these 

 extreme conditions of scarcity and general disturbance of the 

 industry, a tendency towards the remarkable phenomenon to which 

 we have called attention before,* namely, the tendency to maintain a 

 fairly steady level of total value, price and quantity varying inversely, 

 and so more or less completely balancing one another. It is as 

 though there were constantly, month by month and week by week, a 

 certain sum available to be spent on fish, and that that sum tends to 

 be spent, whether the quantity of fish that can be offered in exchange 

 for it be great or small (cf. Fig. 1). 



5. From May to September 1916, the gross earnings of the 

 trawling fleet were actually greater than in the corresponding 

 months of 1912, though a much smaller number of vessels were at 

 work, and though the total catch was only some 40 per cent, in 

 quantity of that of the former year. 



6. If we compare one with another the monthly prices obtained 

 in 1916, or their percentage ratios to the prices of 1912, we see that 

 both prices and ratios fluctuate pretty regularly, and in the same 

 direction. The price tends (as under ordinary circumstances it 

 always does) to be highest in autumn and winter, and to be lowest 

 in summer : the chief reason for the fall in summer being, in all 

 probability, the competition of the herring fishery. It is hardly to 

 be wondered at if the same cause should tend to lower, at the same 

 season and in even greater projwrtion, the abnormal prices of trawled 

 fish in these recent years. 



* Cf. On Fluctuations in the Market Price of Fish, by D'Arcy W. Thompson. Third 

 Report N. S. Fisheries Investigation Committee (Northern Area), p. 291, 1908, Cd. 

 4350. 



Though Tables of this kind are somewhat bulky, and have at first 

 sight a complicated look, it seems well worth to print them, not only 

 (as we have just done) for the total catch, but also for a few of the 

 principal fishes. Accordingly I subjoin these (though without the 

 full percentage equivalents) for cod, medium and small haddock, 

 medium plaice, and lemon soles. 



1 ABLE. 



