FISHERY INDUSTRIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 
REPORT OF THE DIVISION OF STATISTICS AND METHODS OF THE 
FISHERIES FOR 1918. 
By Lewis RapcurFE, Assistant in Charge. 
INTRODUCTION. 
In recent years the only report of the work of this division, in- 
cluding the mass of detailed statistics of the fisheries collected during 
the preceding calendar year, has been incorporated in the annual 
report of the Commissioner prepared at the close of the fiscal year. 
That these statistics and discussions may be made available to the 
public at an earlier date, and for other urgent reasons, it has been 
deemed advisable to issue a detailed report of the work of the division 
at the close of each calendar year. The work of the division for the 
first half of the calendar year 1918, including the results of several 
statistical canvasses, has been dealt with in some detail in the Com- 
missioner’s report for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1918, and has 
been omitted from the present report. The results of a canvass of 
the fisheries of the Pacific Coast States for 1915 were presented in 
condensed form in the Commissioner’s report for the fiscal year 1917. 
The statistics and other information obtained in this canvass are 
given in detail in this report. 
SUMMARY OF THE WORK. 
In its relations with the fishing industries in 1918 the Bureau has 
striven to render the largest possible measure of service in increasing 
the consumption of fish and in the development of markets for fishery 
products, particularly the little-used or neglected forms. Special 
attention has also been given to increasing the use of the waste 
products of the fisheries, such as roe and buckroe, the meat of whales 
and porpoises, etc., for food; the use of fish waste and waste fish for 
conversion into oil and fertilizer or fish meal as an animal feed; and 
the use of the skins of sharks and other unused aquatic forms for 
tanning into leather and the like. The adoption of improved meth- 
ag are the discontinuance of wasteful practices have been encour- 
aged. 
The industries, particularly those engaged in canning and preserv- 
ing fish by other methods, labor under a serious handicap through 
ignorance of the scientific principles underlying these operations, 
the methods being largely empirical. The Bureau has started investi- 
ations in the canning and salting of fish for the purpose of establish- 
ing the basic principles governing these operations and determining 
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