108 American Fisheries Society 



time they are caught until offered for sale to the consumer, 

 as, for example, the elimination of the practice of forking the 

 fish. Not infrequently fish receive as high as 9 to 12 fork- 

 ings, with the result that putrefactive bacteria may be intro- 

 duced into the tissues and self -digestion of the cells promoted. 

 The needless bruising of the fish resulting from this method 

 of handling further promotes autolysis. This matter has re- 

 cently been receiving the attention of fishery journals in the 

 United States and Canada. The Bureau of Fisheries is en- 

 deavoring to learn what, if any, economical methods of hand- 

 ling may be substituted for the present practice, and is pre- 

 paring to wage an active campaign to eliminate this practice. 

 It is noteworthy that those in the industry are also apprecia- 

 tive of the necessity for the adoption of some other method of 

 handling the fish, and express a willingness to aid in lessen- 

 ing the number of times the fish are forked. 



TECHNOLOGICAI. INVESTIGATIONS 



An entire paper could well be devoted to the phase of the 

 Bureau's work which deals with technological investigations of 

 the underlying scientific principles governing the preservation 

 of fishery products to determine the feasibility of their pres- 

 ervation by untried methods, and to discourage the use of 

 unsatisfactory, wasteful, or uneconomical practices. Suffice 

 it to say that the Bureau has developed improvements in the 

 methods of fish salting, whereby it is possible to salt fish at 

 higher temperatures and therefore in warmer climates, and 

 this year gave practical demonstrations of the methods, re- 

 sulting in the successful salting of 80,000 fish on the St. 

 Johns River, Fla., where previous attempts failed. It has 

 also developed satisfactory methods of canning the west 

 coast mackerel and other local fishes. A packer on that coast 

 recently received an order for 10,000 cases of mackerel pre- 

 served in a certain manner, and he came to the Bureau for 

 the results of its experiments in canning fish by this method 

 in order that he might undertake to fill the order. The Bureau 



