FISHERY, the business or occupation of catching fish. The word fishery is popularly used in a comprehensive sense; not merely is there a herring fishery, a salmon fishery, a cod fishery, a pilchard fishery, etc., for catching these genuine fishes, there is a whale fishery for har pooning the mammals called whales, a crab and lobster fishery for catching those crustaceans, an oyster fishery for obtaining those testaceaus mollusks, as well as a seal fishery for capturing those animals. The great localit' for the whale fishery is the polar regions of the N. and S. hemispheres, that for the cod fisheries the banks of Newfoundland, that for the herring fishery the entire E. coast of this country and the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland, that for the salmon fishery the rivers of North America and Great Britain. The prac tice of salting fish was known to the Egyptians about 1351 B. C., or even
earlier. Herrings were largely caught in Scotland, as early as the 9th century. The injudicious interference of the gov ernment drove some of the fishermen to Holland. The fisheries of the United States are superintended by the federal Bureau of Fisheries which is a division of the Department of Commerce. There are also similar bureaus in many States, and extensive hatcheries for propa gation of various species with which to stock our waters have been established. In 1919 the number of vessels employed in the fishery industry of the United States was estimated at 8,280 of 228,000 tons; the number of persons employed at 188,000; the capital invested at $142,140,000; and value of products at $110,992,000, about one-fifth of the total value of fishery products throughout the world.