Sardines

Torres Strait

Reorganisation of Industry.

THE depression has paralysed the sardine-curing industry, which had started very promisingly on Murray Island, in Torres Strait, and to which references were made in this journal last year.

Enormous quantities of sardines of good quality are available in these waters; and an enterprising company (Murray Island Fisheries Ltd., of 270 Queen Street, Brisbane) launched the industry. For some time, there was a satisfactory market in Java. The sar dines were merely sundried and salted, for the consumption of the natives in Java, more particularly coolie labour.

But, in the past year, this market dis appeared. It was not so much a ques tion of price—the Australian exporters, shipping to a gold-standard country, received a substantial exchange premium—as of the inability of the Dutch people in Java to employ and feed native labour. There has been a grave shrinkage in East Indies primary production, as a result of the de pression.

Murray Fisheries Ltd. is now re organising its plant and organisation, so as to undertake the canning of the sardines for European consumption; and they will be placed on the market early next year. The industry, on the new basis, should have a good record.