Year: 1873

THE SARDINE FISHERY.


How Sardlnes are Prepared for the
| Market.


The sardine fishery, with all its at
tendant industrial activities, is one of
the important business features of the
coast of France. There are indications,
however that these toothsome little fish
are either becoming scarce or less easily
caught than of aforetime ; for the yield
grows less every year, both in the ag-
gregate quantity obtained and the aver
age catch per boat, The fishery is pro-
secuted from April till October, and
furnishes employment to some 10000
sailors, with their 3,840 boats on the
water, and some $4,000 men, women
and children on land, in preparing the
fish for market. Every year shows a
diminution in the catch and an advance
in the price. This is shown by table,
recently published by the American
Grocer, which gives the figures of the
sardine fishery for the past thirty years,
and exhibits the annual decline in guam
tity caught and the corresponding adj
vance in market price. Whereas, from
1910 to 1S49 the average catch per boat
was 335,600 fish, and their price about
81 per 1 900; the catch last year aver
aged only $4,000 fish per boat, and the
price has mounted up to $3.50 per 1000
fish. 1t is, therefore, quite probably
that, unless some change soon comes,
sardines will take their place among
epicurean rarities, and will command
that peculiar respect which, while so
numerously and cheaply procured, they
have failed to compel.


The preparation of sardines for mar
ket is quite an interesting performance,
and u mostly done by women and chill
dren who leave country homes to spend
the "sardine season" on the coast.
These do all the handling of the fish
from the time they leave the boats
until they are ready to be finally sol
dered up in their boxes. They work
ten hours day as rule, and may do
as much overwork as they choose, at
frem three to four and half cents an
hour. They usually make sixteen hours
days work, and as they are free to eat
as many sardines as they want, al
though expected to "find themselves"
in all other respects, they generally
manage to make enough during the sor-
dine season to keep their families
through the winter. They sleep in an
outhouse of the shanty description, and
supply their own beds and do all their
own housekeeping.


The condition precedent, " first catch
your fish," having been complied with,
the sardines are taken to the workshop,
where they are at once salted, which is
done by throwing into each basket
few handfuls of rock salt and shaking
the baskets so that the salt shall reach
every fish. Then they are spread out
upon tables covered with zinc and left
there three or four hours, to allow all
liquid to drain off. Next they are de-
capitated and deprived of their insides
by means of sharp knives, which are
made to operate with wonderful dexter
ity in the hands of these female and
infantile experts. Washing with sea
water is the next process, after which
the fish are placed, tails up, in wire
basket of 200 sardines capacity, which
is hung up in the open air for several
hours until its contents are dried. Fry
ing comes next in order, and this is
done, not in their own fat, of which the
fish have no superabundance, but in the
best kind of olive oil, in pans each just
large enough to hold one of the wire
baskets. Here they simmer in the boil
ing oil from five to ten minutes, until
by testing they are found to be cooked.
This testing consists in taking out
fish and breaking it in two, when, if it
is white and the backbone quickly de-
taches itself, the fish is considered
cooked and the basket is taken from the
pan.


After cooking, the baskets of fish are
taken away and hung just over zinc
table, for three or four hours, where
they drip until perfectly dry, and are
then placed before the women who do
the packing. This is the only handling
they get after being stood up to dry as
previously described. They are now
taken out of the baskets, one by one,
and laid in the boxes, literally sardine
fashion, and are overAoyed with pure,
fresh olive oil. As the fish absorb a
portion of the oil there is no stinting Of
the deluge they receive. The boxes
then pass to the hands OF the solderer,
who operates with an iron kept hot by
a gas.burner "in its midst" connected
| by rubber tube with the gas pipes,
and having bofore him table so Or
ranged as to reyolve and save time in,
manipulating the boxes. The process
Of soldering ID swift and systematic,