UTILIZATION OF CANADA'S PACIFIC MARINE RESOURCES 317 



facilitates prompt return to harbours in fog or dark, and the range 

 finder and Loran for general assistance in offshore navigation. 



The machines mentioned above were developed for other purposes 

 and later adapted to fishing vessels. There are special developments, 

 too. Prominent are power driven drums on the sterns of small boats 

 for easily setting out and picking up gill nets (or handling long lines), 

 larger drums for handling salmon purse seines, power driven gurdies for 

 handling trolling lines, the older long line gurdies of the halibut boats, 

 and stabilizers for trollers and other smaller craft. These are the pro- 

 ducts of the ingenuity and enterprise of fishermen. Other ideas are 

 constantly being tested and rejected or modified. All ina'ease the ef- 

 ficiency of fishing or reduce the physical labour of fishing and, in so 

 doing, shift the emphasis for success in fishing from physical strength 

 and hardihood to ingenuity and technical skill. 



A variety of factors contributes to the rapid development of ef- 

 ficient fishing methods. The army of fishermen is not a stable one: it 

 is always receiving recruits from (and losing deserters to) other indus- 

 tries—logging, farming, construction— so that new ideas, some practical, 

 some naive, are continually being tried, with the good ones being 

 adapted and applied to local conditions. Furthermore, "Western Ca- 

 nadian fishermen are recruited from a variety of the great fishing centres 

 of the world so that methods successful in other places are available for 

 trial under local conditions. In general, there is ample opportunity to 

 try and apply new fishing methods within existing regulations. When 

 successful ones are developed, the educational standard is high enough 

 to facilitate the ready dissemination of information through trade and 

 technical journals. The organization of the industry is at once strong 

 enough and adaptable enough to bring promptly into general use all 

 really useful developments. 



Economic Position 

 The fishing industry of Western Canada is centred on a favoured 

 section of a favoured continent. The inhabitants of British Columbia 

 have no urgent need of fish as a protein food. Rather, they use the 

 choicer varieties occasionally as a change from meat. In general the 

 processed products of the fishing fleets are shipped to the markets of the 

 continent and the world to provide exchange for the foods and manu- 

 factured goods which go toward maintaining a high standard of material 

 welfare. 



Application 

 The low local demand for untreated fish and the wages for labour 

 expected by fishermen require that most of the fish be processed in one 



