The fishing people, chiefly Tanka but including other Chinese like the Hoklo and Hakka, are concentrated at Aberdeen and Shau Kei Wan on Hong Kong Island and seven settlements in the New Territories. By environment and preference, they are deeply conservative, disinclined to mix in the affairs of landlubbers. Nevertheless, the irresistible winds of change which have swept through the colony since World War II have shaken them loose from their traditional moorings. Like the farmers, they were able to free themselves from the iron grip of the laans when the Fish Marketing Organization put the middlemen out of business. The Fish Marketing Organization gave them a fair return on their catch, established cheap credit to improve their boats and equipment, provided boats and trucks to get their fish to the five wholesale markets and founded schools for their children. CARE and other relief organizations came to their aid. The Fisheries Division offered classes in navigation, modern seamanship and boat design, marine engineering and the use of up-to-date fishing equipment, with classes being adapted to the fishermen’s working schedules. A fisheries research unit from Hong Kong University became a regular part of the departmental organization. The 240-ton otter trawler _Cape St. Mary_ cruised the fishing grounds from the Gulf of Tong King, west of Hainan Island, to Taiwan in the east, gathering data on ocean currents, water temperatures and depths and the feeding habits of fish. A fishing master was appointed and careful studies were made of pearl- and edible-oyster culture. All these are routine procedures in present-day fishing centers, but they were virtually unknown in Hong Kong until 1946. Since then, despite harassment and inshore fishing restrictions enforced by Red China, the tonnage and market value of the annual catch have almost tripled. Red China has maintained a certain disinterestedness in its mistreatment of fishermen. During the last five years the Communists demanded so great a share of the fish caught by their own people that thousands of their fishing boats never returned. Some sailed far out in the China Sea, then turned back toward Hong Kong and became refugees; others slipped through Chinese shore patrols at night and defected to the British colony. Between 1957 and 1962, the new arrivals swelled the colony fishing fleet from 6,000 to the present 10,550 units.