The Sea-Food Boom

Splashing along to unprecedented prosperity last week was one of the oldest American industries: fishing. Up & down 12,000 miles of U.S. coastline the boom was on: the long, rough-planked piers were piled with fresh-caught fish, smelly little fishing boats huffed and chugged out to sea and in to dock, ambitious fishermen mended nets, tinkered with marine engines. All told, the industry will rake in over $200,000,000 this year, highest ever, and 40% above the prewar take.

War & Circumstance. Inflated meat prices forced many a U.S. housewife to buy more fish; then meat rationing pushed the seafood boom further. A month ago Fisheries Coordinator Harold Ickes predicted that the U.S. and her allies would want seven billion pounds of fish this year, almost double last year's haul. There is not a fisherman's prayer of meeting such a titanic demand. As a natural result, prices have more than doubled since 1940.

The possible fish shortage will not be the industry's fault. Since Pearl Harbor the Government has taken hundreds of the biggest, most efficient fishing boats for overseas, coast-patrol and antisub work, has drafted thousands of husky young fishermen into the Army, has shipped carloads of nimble-fingered Jap fishermen and cannery workers to internment camps. Besides this there are Navy restrictions, shortages in engine parts, tackle and supplies.

Risk & Profit. Not at all perturbed by the booming confusion is burly, wind-whipped Captain Iver Carlson, Boston's No. 1 fisherman. He is the cocky master of the Cormorant, a trawler cited by Fish-boss Ickes for bringing in more than 653,000 lb. of fish in five trips. Captain Carlson knows that Nazi subs have already sunk many a Boston fishing boat. Yet he goes out as fast as he can stow in supplies, sign up crews and get union clearance. The rewards are worth it: in eight weeks and four days of fishing this year he earned $10,960--roughly $50,000 a year, if he keeps it up. Each of Captain Carlson's men has earned $3,500 since New Year's Day. (In 1910 the high boat out of Gloucester earned each of its crewmen $642 in eleven months.)

But Boston is not the fishing town it was. The famed cod is almost gone--subs and Navy restrictions keep fishing dories away from the cod-congested Grand Banks, 800 miles to sea.

Sardines & Tuna. Along San Francisco's colorful Fisherman's Wharf, seaside diners watched the row on row of neat little sardine seiners and bright blue crab boats, bargained with fish peddlers, patted fat, fish-fed cats. California fishermen also make money in netfuls, have the same fleet and manpower troubles as their Eastern brothers.

Biggest catch is sardines, which run over one billion pounds annually, account for one-quarter of the total U.S. fish haul. Because sardines must be caught in the dark of the moon, when their phosphorescent glow gives them away, the Navy convoys the bobbing fleet to sea in the afternoon, coddles it through the night, escorts it home in the morning. Egged on by higher prices ($22 a ton v. $10 in 1940), the remnant of the sardine fleet has done an amazing job, netted only 20% fewer fish than last year. But U.S. citizens will not benefit. The Army and Lend-Lease have bought 80% of California's canned sardines, 25-30% of its fresh fish.

In sunny San Pedro, one of the U.S. fish capitals, the harbor was hectic with production. The white-hulled tuna clipper Long Island warped in with the season's first catch of bluefin tuna--a whopping 90 tons, worth about $20,000. Grizzled fishermen, speeding their net mending, talked about the biggest tuna run ever, wondered if prices would go above the present $200 a ton (1940: "$120).

One who sailed to get his share was short, swarthy Captain Andrew Vilicich, master of the sleek, 77-ft. Gallant. Like most West Coast fishermen, Captain Vilicich is a year-round worker, goes after tuna from April to July, sardines from August to March. On his boat he took in $112,000 last year. His crew collected $61,000; he got all the rest. This kind of money has made Fisherman Vilicich the next thing to an economic royalist: he owns his ship (value: $30,000), a share in a San Francisco sardine plant, a comfortable, two-story house, sends his son to Santa Clara University.

The fishing industry was making money galore. But the 125,000 U.S. fishermen had something else that was new--prestige. For the first time since Plymouth Rock, the fisherman was absolutely vital to the nation's food supply, as needed and respected as the rancher, the farmer.

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