Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/390

 Food For The Taking

��The dogfish, the sable, the goosefish, the huge whale, the giant kelp — all are

By A. M.

ONE of the reasons why we suffer from the high cost of living is because we refuse to eat much of the food which we have. Millions of dollars' worth of wholesome, fine- flavored fish are thrown away each year. And as for the marine vegetables which can be had for the taking all along our shores — the majority of our people do not know that they exist.

Take the case of the goosefish, a food which pound for pound equals beef steak in protein (flesh- building material). Only seventy-five per cent of a pound of sirloin is edible; ninety per cent of the goosefish is edible. Hence, the goosefish equals the steak in available protein content. Yet we go on blithely throwing away ten million pounds a year of this valuable food fish.

The absurd part of this startling extravagance is that we reject the goosefish simply be- cause we do not ad- mire its looks.

It is so exten- sively used in Ger- many, where it ap- pears under the name of See-Teufel (sea-devil), that the catch on the North Sea does not supply the demand. Before the war large quan- tities of this fish were imported into Germany from Great Britain. The Scotch and English fishermen found the goosefish very

���The Greedy Goosefish Is Good to Eat

The goosefish averages about three feet in length. It is not unusual, however, to find larger fish. The broad body and large head surmounted by a tuft which acts as a lure for its prey, the enormous mouth with its double row of strong teeth all tend to make its appearance repulsive. It eats any living creature it can overcome. Fishes, lobsters, squids, crabs — even water- fowl, such as ducks and geese, are all on the goosefish's bill-of-fare. To eat "like a horse" is a common expression, but to eat like a goosefish would better express the idea of a huge appetite, because the weight of a single meal of a goosefish will be half as much as the weight of the fish itself

���Kanten Is Made in Japan from Seaweeds

��It is a sort of isinglass. It is thoroughly white, semi- transparent and shiny. It is extensively used for food in the form of jellies, candies, pastries and for anything which is prepared with gelatine. It is much superior to the common animal isinglass. Late statistics of the production of "kanten" are not available, but in 1902 three million pounds were made with a valu- ation of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars

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��valuable sea foods that we throw away. Eat them and reduce the cost of living

Jungmann

profitable. Figures gathered just be- fore the war show that they annually sold over five million seven hundred

thousand pounds of this

fish.

��The Mystery of the Tile Fish

Another fish which has never attained the popu- larity it deserves is the tilefish. It is the center of one of the most baffling marine mysteries. Noth- ing about this fish had ever been recorded until 1879, when a schooner fishing off Nantucket caught several thousand pounds of this large and beautiful fish. The cap- tain of the schooner was sufficiently interested to send one of the fish to the United States Fish Com- mission Where it was found to be new.

Efforts were made at once to establish a fishery, but before anything defi- nite could be done the tilefish were all mysteriously killed in March, 1882. The first news of the tragedy was brought in by a skipper who said he had sailed for fifteen miles through a mass of dead and dying fish which were floating on the surface of the water. The disas- ter was investigated by the United States Fish Commission and it was estimated that the dead fish covered an area one hundred and seventy

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