Food from the Sea 



With some exceptions, the industry is also fragmented into catching, 

 processing, transporting, and marketing interests rather than providing an 

 integrated fish catching-to-consumption system. Modern marketing tech- 

 niques are not generally evident. At present the market demand for food 

 fish is largely for species which have been fished for a number of years and 

 which are limited in supply. 



Finally, advances in domestic production have been inhibited by in- 

 adequate knowledge of fish stock distribution, abundance, and behavior. 

 Consequently, there may be artificial limitations on the species being 

 caught, the areas being fished, and the fishing methods being used. Some 

 resources near the U.S. coast may still be greatly underexploited. 



Federal Programs To Assist the Fishing Industry 



The Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, cooperating with other Federal 

 agencies and State, academic, and industrial organizations, conducts a 

 variety of programs to foster the economic growth and diversification of 

 U.S. fisheries. The requested appropriation for the FY 1969 fishery develop- 

 ment and seafood technology programs of the Bureau totals $42.7 million. 

 These funds provide for a continuation of the following major programs : 



1. Resource development and management: These programs account for 

 about 63 percent of the funds requested and are designed to gather data 

 to predict abundance and distribution of fish stocks, provide the under- 

 standing needed to maintain the harvest at a level of optimum sustainable 

 yield, and obtain information for international negotiations on high seas 

 fishery resources. Among achievements of this program during 1967 were: 



— improved prediction of abundance and distribution for skipjack, 

 bluefin, and albacore tuna in the Pacific, and groundfish and sea 

 scallops in the North Atlantic ; development of a prediction model 

 for obtaining maximum yield from the Tortugas, Florida, pink 

 shrimp fishery; 



— initiation of assessment studies of brown shrimp in the Gulf of 

 Mexico; 



— development of lobster and menhaden tagging techniques; 



• — development of sonar equipment for monitoring salmon migration 

 in Alaskan streams in cooperation with the State; 



— continuation of pesticide monitoring along the East Coast and the 

 Gulf of Mexico estuaries; 



— completion of two phases of the fishways at Willamette Falls in the 

 Columbia River system; 



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