FISHES OF OUR NORTH ATLANTIC SEABOARD 
29 
for food. Therefore the food they select, 
both from land and sea, has been chosen 
more from the standpoint of flavor than 
from that of nourishing qualities. The 
choice cuts of beef and the choice varie¬ 
ties of fish are taken and the remainder 
all but discarded. 
They have been particularly slow to 
adopt new salt-water fishes into their diet. 
What was ignored yesterday comes into 
the market to-day, and to-morrow it ac¬ 
quires a vogue. 
It is not so long ago that the Pollock 
was in such small demand that it was 
scarcely worth the taking. So also with 
the Tuna. But to-day both find ready 
sale, the latter particularly in cans. 
The Flounder, likewise, used to be 
eaten only by the initiated few; but now 
it is one of the most ready sellers. So it 
has been with the Haddock and the minor 
Salmons. 
TRAINING THE NATIONAL TASTE 
Sea Mussels and Tilefish (see Color 
Plate, page .53) show how the public taste 
can be trained under proper guidance, 
and as the population of the country 
grows we shall follow Europe in the utili¬ 
zation of marine resources to supplement 
our land crops. To-day we eat only about 
a third as much fish per capita as the 
people of Europe, and have only scratched 
the surface in promoting the utilization 
of our food-fish resources. 
We have overfished a few of our 
species, but the great majority have 
barely been touched. Even those which 
constitute our principal fisheries are 
yielding, with a few exceptions, only a 
fraction of what they could offer, if 
marketing facilities were better. 
Three basic handicaps—perishability of 
the product, unevenness or uncertainty 
of supply, and unsteady consumer de¬ 
mand—have kept the fresh-fish industry 
from developing as it should. 
FRESH FISH TO EVERY MARKET 
Other products have one or two of 
these handicaps: milk is perishable, but 
considered imperative; canned goods have 
an uneven demand and supply, but only 
fish suffer from all three conditions. 
But lately ways are being discovered to 
overcome the perishability of fish. Meth¬ 
ods of precooling have been found by 
which the fish can be frozen as soon as 
taken, in low-temperature brine, insur¬ 
ing the thorough cooling of every shred 
before chemical change sets in. 
Then the fish is encased in an individ¬ 
ual film of ice and sent to market. The 
housewife who buys her fish in this ice 
jacket can then know it is perfectly fresh, 
having been kept so from the hour it was 
caught. 
A fresh fish bought in a market stall 
is seldom as fresh as a frozen fish pre¬ 
cooled when caught, and once this type 
of frozen fish becomes widely available, 
it is safe to predict that the zone in which 
marine fishes are eaten fresh will reach 
much farther back from the coast than it 
now does. 
Other methods of securing new pa¬ 
trons of the marine fisheries have been 
tried with success. Last winter two 
Boston wholesale fish dealers tried put¬ 
ting up choice cuts of Haddock in con¬ 
sumer packages wrapped in parchment 
paper. The experiment was so success¬ 
ful that these packages have found favor 
as far away as Denver. 
A Boston forwarder took a step in an¬ 
other direction in the extension of the 
fresh-fish market. He undertook to 
gather the less-than-carload lots of fish 
consigned to Philadelphia or other cities 
and to ship them through in carload lots 
with a large saving of transportation costs 
and increased expedition in handling. 
SHIPPING LIVE FISH TO MARKET 
A Canadian fisherman has tried ship¬ 
ping live Lake Trout to New York, with 
striking success. He sent in one ship¬ 
ment 6,000 pounds of Trout. They were 
put in four wooden tanks seven feet 
square and five feet deep, which were 
placed in an ordinary box car. By means 
of a kerosene-driven engine the water was 
kept constantly in circulation. Casual¬ 
ties in transportation were only about 15 
per cent, and it is possible that in the 
future the fastidious can enter their fa¬ 
vorite restaurants, peer into a pool, and 
select the fishes they want to eat—that is, 
if the demand is great enough to warrant 
the regular deliveries. 
That fish from the sea will help solve 
the food problem of America whenever 
it becomes acute is shown by the fact 
that analyses reveal how readily fish can 
be used as a substitute for meat. 
Fresh Salmon has more nutrients in it. 
