270 KEPUKT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



Ik'fofc the dovclopiiicnt of llie .sacdiiK* iiulustiy in MmIiic, IIk^ small 

 li.sh lakcii in connection with the sinoked-hei'i'iny; business were com- 

 monly converted into oil and fertilizer. After the oil had been 

 extracted by boilinji' and pi-essiny', the cluini was broken up, spread 

 on a board platform, and dried by the action of the sun. It was then 

 ground, bagged, and sold at $12 to IIG per ton. 



About fifteen years ago a factory was established at Pillar Point, 

 on the shore of Lake Ontario, for converting the snrplus alewives 

 occurring in that lake into fertilizer. The fish, obtained by means of 

 seines and i)ound nets, were cooked for about 20 niinntes in steam 

 chests, permitted to drain for an hour, and then subjected to pressure 

 in circular curbs holding about 5 barrels of chum each. The scrap was 

 dried and ground and sold to the farmers foi- about $20 to $25 i)er ton. 

 It is reported that in 1880 1,000,000 fish were utilized, yielding 500 

 gallons of oil and 63 tons of fertilizer. Along the shores of the Great 

 Lakes and other waters, quantities of dead fish have been washed up 

 in windrows, furnishing a harvest for the farmers in the vicinity. 



In the pound-net fisheries of Cape Cod many skates and other 

 "X)oor" fish, taken incidentall}^ with the food-fish, are converted into 

 fertilizer. If these contain much oil, it may be extracted by boiling 

 and iJressing. Ordinarily, however, the fish are dried without pre- 

 vious treatment. Especiallj^ is this the ease with skates, which in 

 some instances are suspended in rows above the ground until tlior- 

 oughly dry, and are then ground fine. A large quantity of these fish 

 hanging from a series of flakes or rails i)resents a ver^' curious sight. 



The quantity of waste and spoiled fish, however, is small compared 

 with the very large amount of viscera and other offal resulting from 

 dressing fish. The decrease in weight in dressing ranges from 15 to 

 35 per cent of the rpund weight, according to the species of fish and 

 the season of the year. Assuming an average decrease of 25 per 

 cent, it api)ears that in dressing the 900,000,000 pounds of food-fish 

 produced in the United States each year the refuse amounts to 

 225,000,000 pounds, or 112, 500 tons. While this is a very large amount 

 in the aggregate, it is so widely distributed that the quantity at any 

 one place is not of great importance, and usually its disj^osal is a 

 sanitary problem rather than a source of revenue. In dressing fish at 

 sea the waste is almost invariably throAvn overboard. In the cities this 

 material is usually combined with and handled in the same way as 

 other market refuse. At the canneries where large quantities of fish 

 are dressed, as in the salmon canneries of the Pacific coast, and the 

 sardine canneries of Maine, the refuse is now in many cases ren- 

 dered into oil and fertilizer. This has alreadj- been noted in the 

 chapter on the preparation of oils from waste products in the fisheries, 

 (See pp. 240-242). 



In case the fish dressings contain little oil the inducements for 

 utilizing them are not great*. Water constitutes a very large propor- 

 tion of the viscera, the quantity ranging from G5 to 90 per cent, 



