SEA MUSSELS AND DOGFISH AS FOOD. 255 
some half dozen times that day, I should say, and at each haul got quite a number of 
dogfish, together with other fish, but no other fish in any quantity. About 2 or 3 
o’clock in the afternoon, when fishing in water somewhere near 20 fathoms deep and 
about 10 miles to the south of Block Island, we made a big haul, and I am satisfied 
that that twenty-four hours’ operation landed some 12 or 15 tons of smooth dogfish; 
so I have no doubt in the world that they can be taken in that way to great advantage. 
We were not able to use these fish as fertilizer, because the nearest factory to the point 
of operation was some 200 miles and under the conditions then existing these fish could 
not be run through the menhaden cookers, the knives being too small. Of course that 
could be easily remedied, and I understand has been remedied in the Canadian facto- 
ries. If those fish could be used or had any value at all, I have no doubt in the world 
that in the deep-sea trawl fishing along the coast from Shinnecock to Sandy Hook, 
where my experience lay, dogfish could be caught in quantities and sufficient to make 
it a commercial value to the fishermen. 
As to the edibility of the dogfish: They have been eaten for years and years along 
part of our southern coast, particularly in the lower Chesapeake Bay, from which I 
originally came; and it is said that they have been used in connection with crab meat, 
which is so abundantly put up. 
The mussel is very abundant along the coast, and I two years ago purchased from a 
fisherman, to be used for fertilizer—for manure—a thousand bushels for $50. He 
landed them on the wharf at the farm lot in Little Egg Harbor, near New Gretna, New 
Jersey. Now, those mussels were opened up by this fisherman, giving him sufficient 
wages to live, for 5 cents a bushel. All along the coast, from Cape May to the Maine 
coast, they are very abundant. They are not very abundant below Cape May. 
Mr. WHITMAN. Reference has been made to government dogfish reduction works 
at Canso, Nova Scotia, and as I have just come from there it may be interesting 
for you to know that those works are now taking in all they can handle each day. The 
works have a capacity of 25 tons of dogfish a day, and if they had a capacity of 500 
tons a day there would be no trouble to supply them. Just at this season the dogfish 
are very abundant, and I recently saw one vessel bring in 50 tons, which would of course 
supply the works for two days. But they are making no use of them except to extract 
the oil and convert the residue into fertilizer. This has been going on for the past three 
years, since the Canadian government decided upon this method of dealing with the 
dogfish pest. It is not a commercial success. The government always pays out more 
money than it receives, but that is chiefly because the operating season is so short. 
The works operate only some two months of the year, and the fishermen will not catch 
dogfish at $4 a ton if they can get more profitable fishing to do. It is only when the 
dogfish become so plentiful that they can not carry on regular fishing for food fish that 
the fishermen turn their attention to the dogfish. 
The oil is of superior quality, and both the oil and the fertilizer find ready sale. 
The fertilizer up to this time has been marketed in New York at $35 a ton. The oil 
sells for 30 cents a gallon. Experiments are now being made to see if other products 
can be taken from this fish, such as glue and isinglass; and if the skins can be used as 
Mr. Field has suggested, that will be good, but up to this time they have been treated 
only for the oil and fertilizer. 
The PRESIDENT. Shall we close the discussion? 
Dr. GEORGE W. FrieLp. As Professor Prince has said, we visited last month three 
factories, to which Mr. Whitman has referred, and we got statements in regard to the 
amount of dogfish they had destroyed at two of these works. We madea rough estimate, 
and we figured that those two factories had destroyed about one-fourth of what the 
entire Massachusetts fleet catch in one year. We figure the Massachusetts catch at 
about 27,000,000 dogfish a year; and we found that about 7,000,000 dogfish were de- 
