DOMINION FISHERIES

Taranaki Daily News, 29 September 1930, Page 3

DOMINION FISHERIES

LACK OF PROPER STATISTICS UNIFORM SYSTEM - NECESSARY. .The total value of the produce of the Dominion's fisheries for the year ended March 31 was £497,004, according to figures quoted by Mr. A.. E. Hefford, chief inspector of fisheries, in the annual report of the Marine Department, tabled in the House of Representatives. The total amount of wet fish landed was 367,647 cwt, valued at £449,440, and the value of the yield of the shell fisheues was £38,663. “Unfortunately we are still without the means of obtaining fishery statistics in a tiystematic and comprehensive manner and the returns which reach this, office vary considerably in their approximation to accuracy,” says Mr. Hefford. “By issuing leg books _to individual skippci s and by obtaining records from fishing vessel owners or fish depots and markets endeavours have been made to supplement and to check the information derived from the annual returns of local inspectors. The facts provided by such data afford the only .material evidence upon _ fishery conditions which we can acquire, and those records have already, proved to be extremely useful to us in cons.deiing various fishery problems. “For this reason a great deal of time and attention, which could ill be spared from other duties, has been devoted to tabulating and summarising. Material of this nature, being heterogeneous, is difficult to digest into departmental records. For the same reason and because it is special and more or less confidential it is not suitable foi publication. We can only make the best use of opportunities for obtaining it, although compared with systematically collected statistics it is like catching rain water in buckets, instead of using a properly engineered water supply system. „ - “That a uniform system of collecting and collating fishery statistics is an urgent need, will be appreciated, fully, if one endeavours to learn anything from the figures published as statistics in the annual reports of the Marine Department for the last I's years. We require to know and to. place on record for the guidance of future administration the following facts with regard to the fisheries: —(1) The approximate quantity of each of the more important kinds of fish landed each year for the principal ports; (2) the variations in production in different seasons and different regions; (3) the quantities of fish caught by each of the principal methods of fishing.”