44 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES. 



PRESERVATION AND UTILIZATION OF FISHERY PRODUCTS. 



One of the most important services the Bureau can render is to 

 send trained experts to the fishing centers to instruct those desirous 

 of preserving fish by methods new to them, to ascertain by ex- 

 periment the adaptabihty of various fishery products to untried 

 methods of preservation of these products, to increase the utiliza- 

 tion of waste fish and fish waste, to encourage the adoption of methods 

 which will improve the character of the pack and discourage the use 

 of methods which produce an unsatisfactory pack, to study and 

 attempt to solve obstructive difficulties with which the fishermen are 

 contending, to furnish advice relative to equipment needed and 

 information as to where it m.a,y be obtained ; in fact, to serve as 

 efficiency experts to the fishery interests. 



Although handicapped by lack of adequate provision for work of 

 this character and inabiUty to employ men with the desired basic 

 training because of lack of funds, it has rendered important service 

 to cannery men and others connected with, the fisheries in the Middle 

 Atlantic and New England States. There is a pressing demand for 

 work of similar character in the South Atlantic and Gulf States, in 

 the Pacific Coast States, and in the Great Lakes and Mississippi 

 Valley region. 



The diversion of some of the menhaden vessels to Government 

 use, thereby diminishing the size of the fleet engaged in catching 

 menhaden for fertilizer; the diversion of large amounts of tankage 

 from the packing houses for hog feed, thereby reducing the sources 

 of supply of ammoniates; the general scarcity of fertilizing materials; 

 and the costliness of feed for poultry and stock, afford a very unusual 

 opportunity for increasmg the utilization of fish offal into oil, 

 fertilizer, and fish meal. The amount of unutilized offal is very ^reat. 

 The Bureau has urged the fishermen to install conversion machinery 

 and use this waste, in order to alleviate the shortages of oil, scrap, 

 and meal, and has furnished information" relative to machinery 

 needed, etc. 



Experiments have been made in the preservation of drum, sea 

 robin, sharks, whiting, menhaden, river herring, bowfin, the milt roe 

 of fishes," and various other neglected or little utilized products by 

 untried methods of preservation, to ascertain the methods best 

 adapted to the preservation of those products for market. 



The methods of smoking and cooking smoked fresh-water fishes of 

 various species have been described in circulars prepared and pub- 

 fished for wide distribution. Active campaigns of demonstration and 

 instruction were begun before the close of the fiscal year, with the 

 promise of immediate practical results in the increased utilization 

 of the "coarse" fishes. 



CURING ALEWIVES IN THE CHESAPEAKE BASIN. 



Coincident with the decreased run of alewives, or river herring, in 

 Chesapeake Bay and tributaries, the value of the fish has increased 

 markedly. The methods of preserving the catch are, however, very 

 wasteful. This is due in part to uneconomical methods of cutting 

 the fish, to the custom of selling the fish by count instead of by 

 weight, to the failure to fully utilize the roe, to lack of knowledge of 



