FISH FOR FOXES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 January 1942, Page 4

FISH FOR FOXES

NEW FOOD IN DEMAND ON FUR FARMS. VANCOUVER, British Columbia. Increased use of oulachons as a food for animals on fur farms played -an important part this year in developing a larger market demand for the “candlefish.” Oulachons, small fish of high oil content, are found in Canadian waters off British Columbia only. They school in apparently quite large numbers along the Pacific Coast, principally in April and May. Oulachons are known as “candlefish” because they burn with a candle-like brilliance after they have been dried, and sometimes have been used by Indians as a means of illumination. Fishing for oulachons, however, has only a minor place in British Columbia’s great fisheries operation. Prior to 1938 a few fur farms made use of them as food for their stock, but feeding experiments undertaken in that year led to a definite increase in the fur ranch demand for the fish in 1939 and 1940. British Columbia fishermen took a total of more than 1,900 hundredweights of the fish during the past spring, as compared with the catch of about 470 hundredweights in the spring of 1939. Fur farmers put the oulachons in cold storage so that supplies will be on hand throughout the year.