4 THE FISHING INDUSTRY 



fish. For some years the Fishery Board for Scotland 

 added annually about twenty million plaice larvae to 

 certain confined sea areas (Upper Loch Fyne), and 

 found, as a result, that the number of young plaice on 

 the shallow beaches was doubled. 



In some cases a new species of fish has been intro- 

 duced into a particular fishing ground, with marked 

 success. Thus the U.S.A. fisheries collected and 

 hatched the eggs of the shad on the Atlantic coast and 

 introduced the larvae into the Pacific, with the result 

 that a profitable shad fishery has now been established 

 on the Calif ornian coast. 



The application of science to the fishing industry is 

 not restricted to biological investigations of the food, 

 habits and development of living fishes. It is developing 

 new processes for the better preservation of edible 

 fish for food purposes, so that the large quantities of 

 fish caught periodically for example, in the summer 

 herring fishery may be stored up for gradual consump- 

 tion during the winter. It has shown that fish waste 

 can be manufactured into glue, cattle food, and fertil- 

 izers. It has developed into a profitable industry the 

 extraction of oils from both edible and inedible fish, and 

 the conversion of these oils into hard fats, suitable for 

 the manufacture of soap and margarine. It has demon- 

 strated that the skins of certain fish, notably the shark, 

 can be tanned to make excellent leather. 



With the exception of these pioneer experiments and 

 investigations, however, the fishing industry of to-day 

 is simply an organized art the art of catching wild 

 fish. The story of the industry is essentially a descrip- 

 tion of the methods that are used for capturing the 

 various species of fish that are of commercial importance, 

 for handling, curing, and disposing of the catch. 

 Britain is situated in the midst of the greatest 



