Ma peche a la crevette sur le plateau guyanais les techniques americaines et l'analyse des captures

In November and December 1959, one of us was assigned by the Credit and Technical Assistance Society (SATEC) to do a study on shrimp fishing on the Guiana Shield as practised by American trawlers (Figure 1). This study had both technological and biological goals. It was first necessary to describe the fishing boats and the methods used by American shrimp boats to fish in the Guianas. Each step of processing and packaging of the shrimp was monitored on board as well as on land, from catch up to storage under refrigerated conditions until commercialisation. It was then necessary to evaluate the relative proportions of shrimp and fish in the catches in order to establish the factors governing productivity of the operations. This was done with a view for establishing a fleet of fishing boats in French Guyana wishing to exploit as much of the catches as possible. American trawlers discard all fish and shellfish that are not marketable by American standards. The flat trawls used by ships based in Georgetown (British Guyana) or in Paramaribo (Surinam) are not designed for catching fish; but during the expedition off the shore of Surinam, we observed that a good part of catches was made up of various marketable species, including flatfishes, many goatfishes, pompano fishes, rockfishes, etc. It was thus important to weigh, insofar as possible, species that were discarded. ... (unverified OCR)