Yanks Want Our

Tuna

Valuable Potential Fishing Industry

in South Pacific Permitted to

Go to Waste

IT is reported that Californian business interests, including the Chamber of Commerce, are urging the Stats De artment in Washington to seek fishing bases in the South Pacific in order that American fisheries may exploit the vast tuna resources of that area.

Tuna fishing (and canning) is an im portant Californian industry; but to date little interest has been shown in a similar enterprise south of the equator. Canned tuna was available in Australasia before the war, but it was not generally popu lar —British taste in canned fish seems to run only to salmon and sardines.

Dr. W. Chapman, of the California!* Academy of Sciences, is one of the leaders of the movement to secure bases. He says that the seas around the Gilberts, Marquesas, Fiji, Tohga, Cooks, Samoa and Tuamotus have never been touched as far as tuna fishing is concerned. These territories are, however, the possessions of either the French or the British, who are in a position to limit American in terest in the fishing grounds. American fisheries would have to have harbour and base facilities in some of these islands before tuna fishing would be possible for them.

The idea is a sound one, from the American point of view. If, however, the tuna canning industry is so lucrative as to permit activities so far from home, it also should be of great value to the island territories concerned, and one in which the indigenous ponulations could be use fully employed.

Any canning enterprise needs, in the initial stages, large financial reserves; but the South Pacific fishing industry should be at least as interesting to Aus tralasian and British Big Business as it is to American. The natives of Oceania alone consume sufficient canned fish to support a small canning industry. And there is an unparalleled market for such products in Europe and Asia to-day—and probably always will be.

Mr. W. M. Webster, a farmer and grazier, of Forbes, NSW, has been appoint ed the representative of the Australian Government on the British Phosphate Commission, which operates the huge de posits on Nauru and' Ocean Island. He replaces Sir Clive McPherson, who had been a Commissioner since 1927. The other Commissioners are Mr. W. Bankes Amery (United Kingdom) and Sir Albert Ellis (New Zealand). Mr. Webster was a member of the NSW Closer Settlement Board from 1931 to 1939.

Mr. W. T. Martin, formerly Comptroller of Customs in Fiji, has been appointed Comptroller of Customs, Nigeria. Mr.

Martin left Fiji in April, 1943, to join the political warfare section of Middle East Command. He served in Egypt, the Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Greece and Italy. After some months in London he was trans ferred to South Africa, and when he last wrote to friends in Suva, he was in Cape Town.

The engagement was announced in Taveuni, Fiji, recently of Miss Diana Tarte, the youngest daughter of Mrs. H. V.

Tarte of Vuna Estate and Melbourne, to Mr. David Collins, District Officer, Tave uni.