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Scientists like to talk of the sea's "harvest," but the sea is a vast wilderness, and fishing is essentially a hunt for an unstable and unpredictable commodity. Despite its importance to so many nations, fishing is still one of the world's most backward industries, estimated to be about at the stage that agriculture was a thousand years ago. To fisherman and scientist alike, the 139 million square miles of ocean are still mostly a mystery—but the mystery at last is being approached in a more scientific way. Today's fishing boats have doubled in size, and they are built so that they can haul their nets over the stern instead of hoisting them alongside in the laborious old "otter" process that tired crews, reduced fishing time and endangered fishermen in heavy weather. They are routinely equipped for better fishing with such sophisticated electronic devices as Fathometers and radar, sonar and loran.
U.S. tuna men have changed their ways—and increased catches—by using giant purse seine nets instead of old-fashioned baited hooks. The Japanese have pioneered in a new and promising field called pelagic—or oceanic—fishing. Almost all fishing is now carried out at the surface or on the bottoms of the continental shelves that jut from the world's mainlands. By experimenting with trawling at mid-water reaches, and gauging depths by telemetry and echo soundings, Japan and such other nations as Iceland are opening up a whole new field of mid-ocean fishing.
The changes in technique have already reshuffled rankings among fishing nations. Before World War II, the U.S. was second, behind Japan. The Japanese, who consume five times as much fish per person as Americans, still lead everyone. But Japan is followed by Peru, which has forged an incredible industry (7,000,000 tons last year) almost totally out of the anchovies that are borne up the Peruvian coast on water currents, and Red China and Russia are now third and fourth. The U.S. has sagged to fifth place by allowing its fishing fleet to atrophy—even though it imports more fish than any other nation in the world.
Factories at Sea. Armed with modern methods, the fleets of the world's major fishing powers roam far from their homelands in search of a good catch. The Russians and the Japanese have perfected deep-freeze factories right on board ship that enable them to stay at sea for up to six months. The Russians lead in oceanographic studies that help them find good fishing grounds, and have perhaps the world's most modern fishing fleet. They fish in fleets shepherded by 15,000-ton mother ships that carry helicopters to spot fish schools and frogmen to untangle nets; occasionally, the Russians even use submarines to lead their trawlers to happy hunting grounds.