Japanese Destroying Immature

Threat To Trochus

Industry

Japanese Destroying Immature Shell

THERE is a disposition in certain official quarters to regard the reports of poaching by Japanese sampans as exaggerated. Perhaps they are, to some extent; but there is no doubt that the depredations of wandering Japanese vessels are a very serious matter so far as the trochus industry in New Guinea is concerned.

Trochus fishing saved many planters in New Guinea during the depression.

For a long time, the price of copra was so low that it did not pay the producer to cart it to the beach for shipment, and many of the more enterprising and self reliant men thereupon fitted out their boats and set to work gathering the trochus shell from the sea-bottom around the reefs.

For the benefit of the uninitiated— politicians in particular—it may be said that the trochus is a marine animal which inhabits a conical spiral shell, and that it travels like a snail along the sea bottom. The shell grows to a consider able size—four to six inches across in New Guinea waters —and it is worth about £lOO per ton in Australian cur rency. Fishers are not allowed to take the shell if it is not two and a half inches in diameter. The shell is obtained by native boys who dive and pick it up.

The trochus does not inhabit deep water.

It is a profitable industry so far as the New Guinea Administration is concerned, for the Administration collects £1 per ton royalty and £1 per ton export duty.

During the last four or five years, in ever increasing numbers, Japanese sam pans—boats of a peculiar type with powerful engines—have penetrated all the islands about New Guinea, from the Moluccas in the Dutch East Indies right across to the Solomon and Santa Cruz Islands; and they have been seen very frequently as far south as the North Australian coast. They are gathering up the products of the sea, and especially shell.

No country can claim jurisdiction over the waters which lie three miles or more from its shores. There are hundreds and

probably thousands of reefs in this part of the Pacific where the Japanese are as much entitled to the products of the sea as anyone else.

But, to a degree that is causing anger to planters and traders, and embarrass ment to the governments and Admini strators, the Japanese sampans are invading territorial waters and carrying off the trochus shell. This poaching is bad enough in itself, but actually the prac tice has a far more serious aspect than mere theft. The Japanese habitually take the small trochus shell—the little shell under 2\ inches in diameter. Some say that the Japanese take the shell for the usual commercial purposes; others declare that the small shell is kept alive and that the Japanese are planting it in the islands from which they come— probably the Carolines.

The effect of this continuous process is that various reefs in New Guinea, which have been a source of regular income to residents there, especially during the bad years, are being entirely denuded of their shell. The system fol lowed by law-abiding Britishers, of taking only the shell of a certain size, has en sured the continuance of the industry.

The method followed by the Japanese makes it certain that the industry will be destroyed.

A recent visitor from Manus informs us that the Japanese sampans are as busy as ever they have been —the only difference -being that they appear to be taking away an increasing quantity of immature shell.

It is surprising that the New Guinea Administration has made no attempt to build up the trochus industry by protec tive and artificial methods. Those who have studied the ways of the trochus say that it would be quite easy to collect the immature shell on the more distant and inaccessible reefs and transfer it to more suitable localities where it could be pro tected and encouraged to grow to mar ketable size. Trochus grows quickly—a shell will develop from immature to marketable size in six months.

Presumably, it will be the same old story. When the Japanese have denuded the accessible beds and have carried off a large portion of the immature shell, and the industry is in danger of collaps ing altogether, the Administration will awaken to the sad development and will then become very busy and spend much money in an attempt to re-establish it.