AUSTRALIAN FISHERIES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23004, 6 October 1936, Page 10

AUSTRALIAN FISHERIES

SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATIONS NEWFOUNDLAND EXPERT APPOINTED (From Our Own Correspondent) SYDNEY, Sept. 24. The Federal Government has appointed Dr Harold Thompson, director of fisheries research in Newfoundland, to take charge of the Commonwealth fisheries investigations at a salary of £IOOO a year for five years. The appointment has caused criticism among local experts, who claim that some of them are as competent to do the work as Dr Thompson. Their argument is that for many years they have done, without Government financial aid and other support, the work which Dr Thompson will be called on to do with such aid and support, and that he will have to spend much of his early time here in learning what they already know. Dr Thompson will arrive in Australia towards the end of next January. On his way he will spend some time in British Columbia and California to acquaint himself with the pelagic fisheries of those countries. A fisheries investigation vessel, which is now being built in Melbourne, is of the type commonly used for fishing on the Pacific coast of America.

The Prime Minister (Mr Lyons) in announcing the appointment, said that Dr Thompson not only possessed high academic qualifications, but also wide practical experience in many phases of fisheries work. Hp was formerly assistant to the professor of biochemistry at the Univer sity of Edinburgh, and was a senior officer of the Fishery Board of Scotland. In 1931 he was selected by the British and Newfoundland Gov ernments to take charge of a plan for the development of Newfound land fisheries, embracing work on the preservation, handling, and marketing of fish, the utilisation of by-products, and a systematic review of fisheries resources. No suitable person was available in Australia, and Dr Thompson had been appointed as a result of thorough inquiries made by Australian scientists in America and England. Mr Lyons said that the work being carried out by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in relation to fisheries, included the exploration of fishing grounds, particularly pelagic or surface-swim-ming fish, by a specially designed vessel. Experiments in the preservation of fish by such methods as quick freezing, canning, smoking, curing and the manufacture of by-products, such as fish meal (a valuable fertiliser), and oil, would be made. There would also be marine biological investigations. The ultimate commercial aims of the investigations are to increase the quantity of fish eaten by Australians and to replace the £1,000,000 worth of imported fish with Austi-alian fish. Although Australians are a seaboard people, the 131 b of fish they eat per head annually is only about one-fourth of the Japanese and one-third of the British. Australia possesses a fine variety of native fish, and many foreign varieties thrive here, but apart from deep-sea trawling ofi the New South Wales coast little has been done to exploit the supply Canada supplies Australia annually with £360,000 worth, Britain £203,000. New Zealand £145,000, Norway • £87,000. and Japan £63,000. Experts say that the expansion of the Australian fishing industry is not possible until the proposed investigation 1 as proved the potentialities of pelagic fishing and has charted the ocean floor for deep-sea fishing. "Fish is dear in Sydney to-day because we can'! catch enough of it," said one expert of the deepsea trawler industry. '' We cannot catch more fish because we dare not go on to new ground, as the bottom of the sea has not been sufficiently explored. The area of the present fishing grounds has been trawled ever since the Government ship Endeavour charted the floor and enabled trawlers '.o use their nets safely We have trawled this stretch so long that I believe the fish, like birds constantly shot at in a particular area, have been frightened away." Officials of the State Fisheries Department said that expansion of the fishing industry could be looked for mostly in the surface fishes, principally among the ->ilchard or small salmon st>ecies. ,