WEALTH FROM SHARKS

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3477, 13 October 1926, Page 12

WEALTH FROM SHARKS

SOUTH AFRICAN SCHEME,

AMERICAN EXPERT’S REPORT.

The enormous migration of sharks and other plagiostome or cartilaginous fish to the warm waters of South Africa, and the building up of a shark skin tanning industry from that source, is the subject of an interesting communication and report to the South African Board of Trade by Dr. Ehrenreich, an American authority, who contemplates establishing this industry in South Africa. He estimates that the migration of these fish between Durban and Port Elizabeth alone is not less than 500,000 a day, and he outlines his scheme to net these fish for industrial purposes.

Dr. Ehrenreich has demonstrated the possibility of establishing such an industry by the success which he has attained in catching them with special gill nets. The nets are set in the migration area, and sharks so caught in large numbers are gilled and quickly drowned. Rays, skates,, devilfish and sea mammals are caught in these nets only accidentally. There are, however, says Dr. Ehrenreich, nets which will catch these fish and mammals scientifically.

Boats are employed 30£t. long, Bft. beam and 4ft. deep, equipped with 12 h.p. crude oil motors and a derrick. The nets are cleared in the early hours of the day, when the fish are hoisted into the boats, fish too large being floated to the dock. The dock and its equipment is described by Dr. Ehrenreich, and the skinning and dismemberment of the flsh, every portion of which is preserved, for the nsoful by-products they contain. In less than a minute a machine removes the skin, free from butcher holes or other imperfections, and properly fleshed. As soon as the skins are removed, the liver is cut, the gall separated, and transferred on an endless chain to the oil machinery, where the oil is rendered instantaneously. The carcase is transferred to the cutting tables, where the meat is cut into long strips, washed, salted and transferred to small cars, running on tracks, to the drying rooms. Part of the head and small fins are transferred to the glue machinery, and the rest of the carcase goes on rails to the hopper of a crusher: from there automatically to a drier and pulveriser. One unit produces fertiliser and the second unit a»nimal fodder. The large intestine and the stomach are put into a special tank, to be tanned later on. The gall of Batoidae (skates) is preserved and also the blood and the pancreatic/gland of all plagiostome fish. The hides are transferred to the tannery and tanned in mineral tan in eight hours, or in vegetable tan in 48 hours, after being submerged in the tanning solution.