THE ULTIMATE SOURCES OF MARINE 

 FOOD 



By Prof. Irving A. Field, 

 Clark College, Worcester, Mass. 



The ocean as a source of food for human consumption 

 always has been a subject of interest, but the attention 

 given to developing the food resources of the sea has 

 been almost nothing compared to that devoted to agri- 

 culture. Without exercising any intelligent control in 

 the cultivation of marine food products we are now ap- 

 propriating for use such food materials as happen to 

 be produced within our reach just as primitive man in 

 ages past depended on land plants and animals in an 

 uncultivated and undomesticated state. At the present 

 time we see the science of agriculture reaching a high 

 stage of development. Most of our nation's land fit for 

 growing crops has been appropriated for cultivation, 

 scientific methods for increasing the yield have been de- 

 veloped, labor saving devices for reaping have been per- 

 fected and yet with it all our rate of food consumption 

 is increasing more rapidly than the rate of production. 

 The capacity of the soil to produce enough food for our 

 rapidly increasing population is fast approaching its 

 limit. Unless the chemists come to the rescue with inex- 

 pensive methods for rapidly combining the necessary 

 chemical elements into palatable, digestible and nutri- 

 tious compounds we shall have to devote our energies to 

 the development of the natural food resources which lie 

 in the waters covering nearly three-fourths of the earth's 

 surface. A prominent authority once stated that four 

 square feet of ocean was capable of supporting a human 

 life. At first thought such a thing seems impossible, but 

 a better understanding of the sea will show that his 

 statement is not far from the truth. It is the purpose 

 of this paper to point out the ultimate sources of marine 

 food and the almost unlimited resources they provide for 

 the production of human food. 



