that will take fast swimming fish such as skipjack 

 promises to open new opportunities for high seas 

 purse seining by tuna vessels. U.S. vessels have 

 scarcely begun to test the potential of various 

 types of conventional sonar gear that is already 

 standard equipment aboard many foreign fishing 

 vessels; the same is true of higli accuracy position- 

 ing equipment. 



Work on a selective shrimp trawl, that would 

 reject most of the trash fish that make life difficult 

 for the shrimp fishermen while protecting the 

 quality of the desired catch, promises to open new 

 opportunities for the economical production of 

 pandalid shrimp. Development work designed to 

 protect the quality of fish at sea— an absolute 

 prerequisite for the degree of quality control now 

 demanded by the U.S. consumer-calls for much 

 greater effort than BCF has been able to provide 

 to date. 



The list could be extended almost indefinitely. 

 The essential point is that cost reduction is rarely a 

 matter of one or two dramatic breakthroughs; real 

 progress is likely to come from the less spectacular 

 but more effective technique of financing and 

 supporting a lively, imaginative program of doing 

 simple things. 



The limited budgets available for development 

 work in detection and harvesting techniques have 

 ruled out any major effort to pioneer new fishing 

 concepts in BCF programs. As a result, there has 

 been practically no work in the United States to 

 parallel that being undertaken by a number of 

 other nations, particularly the Soviet Union. The 

 technical capacity for such work exists, both 

 within and outside BCF; what is lacking is the 

 specific mission, and with it the necessary funding 

 and personnel. 



By way of illustration, a number of potentially 

 promising avenues of research can be cited for 

 each of the functional elements that make up the 

 fishing process. For example, rapid and reliable 

 detection is essential to any effective sea fishing 

 procedure. A great majority of U.S. fishermen are 

 still dependent on crude physical detection 

 systems. Most are limited to visual techniques, 

 which are, for the most part, operative only at or 

 very close to the air-sea interface. Even with the 

 assistance of spotting aircraft, a technique avail- 

 able only for fleet operations or in the harvesting 

 of very high valued fish, range is limited. The 

 vertical detection range can be increased with 



acoustical devices but sonar gear presently avail- 

 able to U.S. fishermen has a relatively short range, 

 does not provide positive identification of the 

 target, and is relatively ineffective for small boats 

 in rough weather. 



BCF has done very little to develop better 

 means of fish detection, and most of that has been 

 confined to research sonar models intended for the 

 use of BCF rather than for commercial fishing. 

 Without elaborating further, the Panel feels that 

 the potential for acoustical and optical fish detec- 

 tion is capable of very great improvement and 

 equally important, can be brought within a price 

 range that would make them attractive for use on 

 small and medium sized fishing vessels. 



Both passive and active acoustical detection 

 systems require further research, and passive opti- 

 cal systems (including aerial and spacecraft spot- 

 ting; airborne TV systems, spectro-photographic 

 techniques, and infrared systems) offer promise. 

 Laser systems may also provide high resolution 

 detection at short range. 



While many of these techniques are outside the 

 capability of the BCF at present, it is essential that 

 close liaison be maintained with the Navy, indus- 

 trial firms, and academic and non-profit research 

 institutions concerned with the basic problems 

 involved. With any of these more distant concepts 

 of fish detection, the critical point with respect to 

 lead time to commercial utilization is the ability to 

 detect, early in the research phase, and follow up 

 areas of promise. Obviously, if it is not done by 

 the Federal fishery agency it will not be done at 

 aU. 



Radical improvements in conventional fishing 

 gear and the development of new harvesting 

 concepts are true research problems; what is 

 required is a systematic attack on the functional 

 relations that link the physical principles on which 

 the gear in question operates, the biological 

 principles that govern the possibility of capture, 

 and the range of fishing strategies available for the 

 unit carrying the gear. 



Again, this can be regarded as a legitimate 

 function of a public agency, since the benefits 

 accrue to the industry as a whole and cannot be 

 captured by a single fiim. 



5. Fish Protein Concentrate 



The potential importance of fish protein con- 

 centrate as one element in the attack on the 



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