FISHES OF OUR NORTH ATLANTIC SEABOARD 
23 
Photograph from Canadian Motion Picture Bureau 
PACKING SARDINES 
Sardine packing had an early origin on the Maine coast as a more lucrative outgrowth of the Herring 
industry. The quantity of canned fish has increased by leaps and bounds, Salmon ranking first and the 
Sardine second. The total value of canned fishery products was more than ^46,000,000 in 1921. 
as much territory 12,000 feet below sea- 
level as the land has 12,000 feet above. 
While man and the terrestrial fauna 
are able to command only the surface of 
57,000,000 square miles of land, the ma¬ 
rine fauna has 140,000,000 square miles 
of sea, with scores, if not hundreds, of 
depth zones over most of this area, each 
with its own characteristic forms of 
life. The water level of the oceans would 
have to be lowered 10,000 feet to bring 
about an even division of the areas avail¬ 
able for life of marine and terrestrial 
faunas. 
With the great existing disproportion 
in area between the land and the sea, it is 
evident that the human race, with its 
seemingly insatiable mass appetite, will 
have to look more and more to the sea 
for its food. 
THE RESULTS OF OVERFISHING 
And yet on every hand one already 
sees the results of overfishing on many 
of the species now entering the fish 
markets. 
The anadromous fishes, particularly 
the Shad and the Salmon, are growing 
scarcer and higher-priced with each pass¬ 
ing year. 
Between overfishing and stream pollu¬ 
tion, the fresh and brackish coastal 
waters are seeing their fisheries depleted 
rapidly toward the vanishing point. 
