The United States commercial fish and shellfish catch for 1962 reached a near record of 5.2 billion pounds and brought U.S. Fishermen a record return of $385 million at dockside, Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall announced today.
The dockside value was $12 million more than the previous record set in 1958 and $23 million above the 1961 value. Shrimp resumed first places as the most valuable single fishery.
According to data compiled by the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries in the Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service, the volume of the 1962 catch was below the record of 1956 but somewhat higher than the 1961 catch.
Although the increase in the domestic catch and in imports of edible fishery products brought the total supply of fresh, frozen and canned products up to the highest point in history, the per capita consumption remained at 10.7 pounds, the same as in 1961. This is attributed primarily to the increase in population, and gains in stocks of frozen and canned fish.
The major part of the catch, as in 1961, consisted of industrial or non-food fish. The industrial fish catch was 2,661 million pounds, 84 million pounds more than the food-fish catch.
The 1962 catch of herring by Maine fishermen was far short of a record but was still nearly three times the 1961 catch. The king crab catch, which is taken off the coast of Alaska, set a new record going 7 million pounds over the previous total.
The North Atlantic groundfish harvest dropped. Cod and haddock catches were about the same as last year but ocean perch and pollock declined.
The Pacific sardine catch reflected a drastic decline while the shrimp harvest increased by 17 million pounds over 1961.
The salmon pack was slightly lower than in 1961 but the tuna pack set a new record with one million more cases than in the previous year. The domestic tuna harvest was somewhat lower than in1961 but record imports of frozen tuna for canning in domestic plants boosted the pack to the new record.
The attached table compared the 1961 and 1962 catch of certain species.
Species 1962 Thousand Pounds 1961
Anchovies 2,600 7,712
Cod, Atlantic 47,000 46,591
Crabs:
Blue 146,600 152,758
Dungeness 8,5000 4,592
King 50,000 43,412
Haddock 134,100 133,597
Halibut 39,900 40,024
Herring:
Maine 158,000 54,463
Alaska 32,000 49,465
Industrial Fish Maine and
Massachusetts (excludes Menhaden) 42,700 42,200
Mackerel:
Jack 90,000 97,606
Pacific 44,600 44,110
Menhaden 2,236,300 2,314,677
Ocean Perch 122,500 132,062
Oysters 56,000 62,300
Pollock 17,100 21,406
Salmon 315,000 310,412
Sardines, Pacific 14,800 43,169
Scallops (meats) 24,100 27,461
Shrimp 190,600 174,494
Tuna 307,300 325,804
Whiting 86,100 100,729
Total, above items 4,166,700 4,229,044
All other species 1,071,300 954,956
Grand total 5,238,000 5,184,000
