The relative importance of fishing, which includes oystering, also appears in the fact that the fishermen are approximately as numerous as any one of the following groups, actors, dentists, draftsmen, peddlers, candy makers, cabinet makers, stock herders, or fruit growers. Errand and messenger boys are more than twice as numerous and nurses three times as abundant. The value of the fisheries in 1920 is liberally estimated as approximately 8130,000,000, including Alaska, which supplied one-third. This is more than the catch of England, which stands next among the countries of the world and twice that of Japan which is third. Yet it is only about equal to the value of the sweet potatoes, kaffir corn, or cotton seed of the United States, and one seventeenth that of the corn. During 1920 the value of the fisheries products was exceeded by that of corn, hay, wheat, cotton, oats, tobacco, apples, and barley, in the order named.
The Reasons for the Small Production of Fish.—Some of the chief hindrances to a greater use of fish are as follows: (1) The distance of the fishing grounds from home. Even the oysterman usually does his work at least a mile from home, whereas few American farmers have fields so far away. (2) The danger involved in seafaring. A note worthy feature of the mortality statistics in the fishing countries of Ice land, Newfoundland, and Norway is the great excess of deaths of young men from 15 to 30 years of age compared with young women of the same ages. (3) The precariousness of the occupation. It is no light thing when a fishing boat sails several hundred miles to the Banks, and then searches for weeks without catching any appreciable supply of fish. The good years bring " prosperity and plenty," while the bad years bring " hardship and hunger." (4) The difficulty of preserving the product. Not only do fish spoil rapidly, but the fisherman cannot drive his animals alive to the railroad station and ship them to a well prepared slaughter house as can the farmer. Nor can he suit his own convenience as to how many he will kill at a time. He must catch the fish when he finds them, and clean them, salt them, or otherwise pre serve them at once. (5) This is one reason for another difficulty, namely the hardship of the fisherman's life. Such a life has indeed an attraction for many young men, and helps to produce the finest type of sailor, but the hardship causes many to shrink from it more than from most occu pations.
These reasons, and others, join with the location of the fishes food supply in causing a large share of the fishery products of the United States to consist of oysters, lobster, salmon, and other species caught in shallow water close to the shore. Even " deep sea " fisheries are conducted in the relatively shallow water over " banks " such as those of George's. Newfoundland, and the North Sea. Only in such places does the sunlight reach the sea bottom so that vegetation can grow and supply food for the fish or for their prey. This food supply increases in high latitudes presumably because dead organisms decay quickly in the warm surface waters of low latitudes, but are preserved a long time in colder water, so that in high latitudes the sea contains more floating food than in low. The difficulty of preserving
fish in warm countries and the unwillingness of tropical people to exert themselves as do the New Foundlanders, for example, also help to cause fishing to be less common in low latitudes than in high latitudes such as Alaska and the Labrador coast.
The Possibilities of a Food Supply from the Ocean.—Although the ocean today probably does not supply 1 per cent of the food of the United States, it offers one of the greatest sources of increased supply.
Some of the ways in which the vast undeveloped resources of the sea can be developed are as follows: (1) By developing people's knowledge and taste so that new kinds of sea food may be used. To a middle west erner it seems strange to find the following on one bill of fare in a small sea-grill in Boston, the greatest Ameri can market for fresh fish: cod, sole, flounder, halibut, schrod, mackerel, c la s, bluefish, fresh salmon, crabs, butterfish, shrimps, lobster, o y st e r s, swordfish, haddock, and finnan haddie. But the Bostonian has not yet learned to eat whale meat, shark, and the despised dogfish, although they are good food. (2) Modern methods of refrigeration make it far easier than formerly to use the fish of warm latitudes. Although fish are not so abundant there as farther north, they exist in vast quantities, and the warm climate and relative absence of storms lessen the danger and hard ship of the fisherman. (3) Another means of increasing the use of the sea as a source of food lies in helping the fish through the first part of their lives. For every fish that reaches the size of one's finger hundreds or thousands of eggs and newly hatched fish are eaten by other animals. That is why in 1919, for example, the United States government not only distributed about 1,200 million fish eggs to local hatcheries to be hatched under protected conditions, but distributed 4500 million fry and 150 million fingerlings, yearlings, and adults. Fish thus protected have a vastly greater chance of growing up than have those left to chance. Although fish hatcheries at present are of more value to inland waters than to the ocean, they represent a distinct tendency toward the control of the sea by man in somewhat the same way that he controls the land. Ages ago man lived on plants and animals that grew of themselves; now he lives on those that he himself raises. Where only one person could then get a precarious living in one square mile, two or three hundred can now provide for themselves abundantly. The leasing of oyster beds by the state, the licensing of lobster fisheries and the distribution of fish eggs are faint beginnings of the cultivation of the sea. Nowhere else, perhaps, is there a greater opportunity for man to increase his power over nature and obtain new supplies of food.