SEASHORE AND WAR
By PROFESSOR C. M. YONGE
AMONG our national possessions are included some half million acres of shore, alternately covered and uncovered by
the sea. This is a region of great fertility, *ith a vast population of animal and also, in rocky areas, of plant life. We have made far too little use of the many edible animals, notably shellfish, which here abound. Even our oyster-beds, the produce of which has never failed to find ready purchasers, have fallen on evil days. Other countries have made better use of their shore-resources. All who have visited the shores of the Mediterranean will have seen the assemblage of bivalves, sea-urchins, crabs, squids and the like which are heaped high in the fish-markets. The French have built up a vast industry on the artificial cultivation of oysters and mussels. The tastes of the Japanese are still more catholic, embracing even jelly-fish. Nor is it entirely a question of the standard of living. That section of an American restaurant menu headed " Sea Food," although usually illegitimately swollen by the inclusion of frogs, is large and varied, and many British visitors have come to share the American appreciation of clam chowder, hard and soft-shelled clams, little-neck clams and soft- shelled crabs, to which, on the Pacific coast, are added fried steaks from that majestic limpet, the abalone.
Only the poorer section of our population has. shown similar
enterprise. Periwinkles, whelks, limpets, cockles and mussels are all eaten to some extent, and the demand for the last has been great enough to justify the erection of cleansing-tanks in certain prolific but polluted areas, notably the estuary of the Conway river. But only the barest fraction of available supplies of these animals are eaten, while many more edible species, such as the soft-shell clam, as abundant in certain regions here as it is in North America, and a variety of similar bivalves, are never eaten.
The productivity of the beds of many of these shore bivalves is remarkable. A cockle-bed covering 320 acres in South Wales contains an estimated population of some 46o million, 86 million being of marketable size. An acre of the best mussel-land pro- duces annually some ro,000 lbs. of mussel-meat with a fuel-value of about three million calories. In comparison with this the yield, in terms of beef, of an acre of best pasture-land is no more than 190 lbs. of meat, equivalent to some half-million calories. And whereas the pasture demands care and artificial enrichment, on the shore man has only to harvest—the sea does the rest.
Seaweeds constitute yet another raw material. Formerly the brown weeds formed the basis of the kelp industry, which fur- nished important supplies of iodine and bromine. These are now obtained from other sources, and before the war the only commercial use of British seaweeds lay in the sporadic collection of the edible species, Irish moss and dulse. But new industrial uses are now being found for the vast accumulation of brown weeds on our rocky shores, while the entry of Japan into the war has introduced a new problem by the stoppage of supplies of agar. This is a protein used as a laxative and as a culture-medium in bacteriology. It is obtained from certain species of red weeds, and its production has been almost entirely in the hands of the Japanese, although at least one small factory has been established on the Pacific coast of America since the last war.
The agar industry has long been established in Japan, where many seaweeds are eaten, but it increased greatly when its pro- ducts came into demand in Europe and America. It is fortunate that individual scientific initiative in this country preceded the stoppage of supplies. Dr. A. P. Orr and Dr. S. M. Marshall, of the Scottish Marine Biological Laboratory at Millport, on the Clyde, have for some time past been investigating the possibility of alternative sources of agar from British red seaweeds. Although they have only found two weeds, and these not very common, which yield agar identical with the Japanese product, they have found other commoner weeds the agar of which, after suitable treatment, gives promise of answering the same purpose. With suitable official backing there are possibilities of developing an industry which will meet our war-time needs and which might become permanently established.
There remain our inshore fisheries, some of which are actually conducted between tide-marks, but all near the shore and so largely immune from enemy action. With the rise of the great trawler industry these inevitably declined and are now nearly extinct in many areas. Possibilities of revival vary, and in some areas Admiralty regulations may be a fatal obstacle, but in others much could be done if the Government could provide nets and labour, which might well be mobile, moving from area to area with the advent of the various fisheries. One concrete example must suffice. Great shoals of sprats annually enter inshore waters. These fish are highly edible and rich in fats—a prime need, and indifferently met by the invertebrate shore-fauna. They can be sold fresh or canned or made into paste or into fish-meal. Around Weston, on the Bristol Channel, there is an .annual winter influx of these fish. They are caught between tide-marks in a variety of nets which exploit the great range of the tides. Formerly they were the object of an extensive fishery, but today only three families of fishermen remain, and they catch the merest fraction of available fish. Yet the produce of their nets has provided the bulk of the fresh fish sold in the Bristol area this winter. This harvest could be increased many times were labour and nets available over the fishing-season.
As this war progresses we are being thrown back increasingly on our local resources, and amongst these the products of our shores, though not the least, have been almost completely neglected. They can furnish additional food involving, what is important in these days, •variety in diet, nutrition for pigs and poultry and also raw materials of various kinds, including fats. Individual effort can achieve little, but some considered policy of exploitation by the Ministry of Fisheries and the Ministry of Food might well yield valuable results with relatively little expenditure of money or labour.
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