72 REPORT OF THE FISH AND GAME COMMISSION. 



plants ill tlie spring of 1919 during the time when the fish were not 

 quite up to the standard of fatness to can. Although it is considered 

 proper to use the menhaden in vast quantities on our Atlantic coast for 

 obtaining fish oil and the herring to a less extent in Norway for oil and 

 meal, it was believed that the unrestricted use of sardines for this pur- 

 pose should not be permitted in California. Our canners themselves as 

 well as the public were opposed to the practice and the legislature, then 

 in session, enacted a law which placed the regulation of the use of fish 

 in reduction plants in the hands of the Fish and Game Commission. 

 The first idea of the legislative committee which passed upon the bill 

 was that the use of any edible fish in reduction plants should be pro- 

 hibited, but adopted the plan of placing the control of the matter in the 

 hands of the Fish and Game Commission when it was shown that fre- 

 quently over-catches cannot be avoided, that fish hoisting apparatus or 

 canning machinery will break and that consequently if the fish could 

 not be used in reduction plants there would be a useless waste. 



The handling of this problem has not been an easy one. Sardine 

 canneries having reduction plants are making a profit out of their waste 

 and this gives them an advantage over the other canneries. Further 

 than this, they are able with profit to divert sardines for reduction pur- 

 poses which have become soft underneath the load in the boat, or fish 

 which are broken or do not otherwise come up to standard and by so 

 doing they make use only of the fine fish for canning. The tendency, 

 however, is for them to use more fish than they should for reduction 

 purposes. The canneries which are not equipped for converting fish 

 and offal into fish meal and oil have paid the fishermen more for their 

 fish than they can get from the reduction plant which buys their offal. 

 As a consequence, they are inclined to can some fish which might better 

 be discarded and with only a few exceptions they pack more cases 

 from a ton of fish than the canneries with reduction plants and they 

 accuse their opponents with using good fish for fish meal and of using 

 that profit to underbid them in the sale of the canned product. 



It has been extremely difficult to regulate the percentage of fish that 

 is discarded in this way, even when an inspector is placed in the cannery. 

 Consequently a plan of cheeking a cannery's daily pack with the 

 amount of fish it receives has been adopted. Their receipts are obtained 

 accurately from the copies of the receipts issued to the fishermen and 

 the daily pack is secured from the memoranda of retort or comptometer 

 records from which the cannery makes up the record of its daily pack. 

 By this means we are able to hold their waste in discarded fish and 

 f-xcess catches within definite limits. 



In the matter of controlling excess catches of sardines our task has 

 also been difficult for fishing conditions vary in one locality through a 

 season and the fishing conditions in southern California are very 



