ABSTRACT
By the early nineteen sixties the fishing industry of Hong Kong stood on the threshold of a second stage of development. 1 Mechanization of the existing types of vessel had been the first stage. Official policy was now to push ahead into the next. Technologically this was possible; politically, administratively, and economically it seemed highly desirable. Because for both ideological and pragmatic reasons compulsion was out of the question, and because approximately 95% of Hong Kong’s fishing vessels remained owner operated, the answer to the question whether or not the policy would succeed depended upon the separate, private decisions of almost 5,000 individual master-fishermen. 2
