﻿FISH-SCRAP FERTILIZER INDUSTRY OF ATLANTIC COAST. 45 



IN THE LIGHT OF THE MORE COMPLETE UTILIZATION OF THE WASTE FROM 

 CANNERIES AND OF WASTE FISH. 



The aggregate annual waste from the dressing of fish is undoubt- 

 edly great. About 25 per cent of the weight of the " round " or fresh 

 fish is discarded in dressing. With the exception of the canneries, 

 there are few places where enough fish are dressed to make the treat- 

 ment of the cuttings for the preparation of fertilizer economically 

 feasible. Practically all of the small fish to be found on the market 

 fresh are sold " round " ; the dressing is done by the individual con- 

 sumer. The waste thus produced finds its way into the garbage and 

 is disposed of in that manner. In some fishing centers it is the cus- 

 tom to remove the viscera of the fish before marketing, but not the 

 heads. In this case the fish are usually dressed on board the fishing 

 boats and the waste is thrown overboard. Once the habits of the 

 fishermen in this regard are overcome, and a plant for its treatment 

 established at a convenient point of call for the fishing fleet, it is 

 possible that a great deal of this material could be saved and con- 

 verted into fertilizer. It is the custom at present in this manner of 

 dressing fish to save the livers. The remaining viscera probably are 

 low in their content of oil, possibly too low to make an extraction 

 profitable; and the remainder is of a rather watery nature, contain- 

 ing little solid matter. However, the solid matter that is present is 

 highly nitrogenous and therefore of fertilizer value. Furthermore, 

 it is believed that to throw this r iterial overboard is injurious to the 

 fisheries, causing the desirable fish to forsake the waters thus polluted 

 and attracting large numbers of dogfish inimical to the food fish. 

 This practice is sufficiently undesirable to merit prohibition by law. 

 At the same time, in such a contingency, plants suitable for its dis- 

 posal should be assured by the same power. 



There is a distinct possibility that enough of this product is re- 

 coverable at certain points to enable small rendering plants to operate; 

 and at present, it is known to the writer, it is planned to make use 

 in some manner of the offal obtainable from at least one fleet of about 

 50 fishing boats. But there is not a large enough number of fishing 

 centers where the practices are such as described, nor is there enough 

 material available at any one point to make the amount of fertilizer 

 produced from that source of any great significance. 



The cuttings from herring and other fish canned at the center of 

 the fish-canning industry on the Atlantic coast, it has been shown in 

 a previous paragraph, amounted to 36,496 hogsheads, yielding 31 tons 

 of wet scrap in 1895, and an amount of cuttings which gave 50 tons 

 of wet scrap in 1905. While data showing the completeness with 

 which the scrap of that neighborhood is utilized are lacking, it is 

 presumable that since the equipment for its rendering has been in- 

 stalled, all that is readily available is so employed. Similar material 



