THIRTY-SECOND BIENNIAL REPORT 81 



BLUEFIN TUNA 



An analysis of the boat catches of bluefin tuna demonstrated the 

 fact that the supply was meeting the needs of this fishery without 

 showing signs of exhaustion. 



MISCELLANEOUS STUDIES 



A variety of special investigations are carried out by the labora- 

 tory staff for the purpose of supplying information to members of the 

 Legislature, to men engaged in the fish trades, and as aids to the 

 administrators of our fisheries. An example of such studies is our 

 determination of the relative effectiveness and destructiveness of the 

 several types of nets used in sardine fishing. 



FISHERIES STATISTICS 



During the past two years a system was adopted by which the 

 fisheries catch records are transferred from the original ticket receipts- 

 to punched cards, which are arranged and recorded by machine. This 

 allows of more complete reports and makes readily available much 

 information from the records that in past years was seldom obtained 

 because of the high clerical cost. The adoption of this system of 

 handling the records necessitates a number of changes which have 

 improved the quality of our statistics. The adoption of a State serial 

 number for fisliing boats has eliminated most of the confusion as to 

 the identity of fishing boats, and the designating of official common 

 names for species of fishes has improved the accuracy of our records. 

 The complete reports obtainable by this punched card system will be 

 increasingly valuable in the future as they are used in studies of changes 

 in the abundance of our fishes. 



LIBRARY 



The policy of rigid selection of library material has been con- 

 tinued and has resulted in building up a set of reference publications 

 of relatively small bulk but of a high degree of usefulness, so that the 

 library is of the greatest service to the staff members. The library 

 is gaining recognition by men interested in our fisheries, and the num- 

 ber of citizens taking advantage of our library service has greatly 

 increased during the last two years. 



PUBLICATIONS 



Staff members have been frequent contributors to the quarterly 

 magazine, California Pish and Game, and have prepared occasional 

 articles for publication in the two Pacific coast trade journals. Pacific 

 Fisherman, and West Coast Fisheries. Major reports presenting the 

 research work are printed as Fish Bulletins. Fourteen such bulletins 

 were completed during the biennial period, 1930-1932, of which eight 

 were distributed, one is now in process of printing and five are await- 

 ing printing. 



The bulletins issued were as follows: 



No. 30. The commercial fish catch of California for the year 1929. By the staff 

 of the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries. 133 pp., 75 figs. 



6—97533 



