Product Details

Historical Context

The Lybeck Ocean Harvester Company, Inc. was incorporated in Delaware in 1920.

The Lybeck Ocean Harvester was a fish catching machine, for deep sea fishing and packing on wholesale scale, the invention of Captain Nels A. Lybeck. The “Liberator No. 1’’ was equipped with three 75 h.p. heavy oil diesel engines for propulsion, and two 50 h.p. engines of the same type operating dynamos, generators, and conveyors.

The Ocean Harvester was a completely equipped packing house plant to operate immediately at the source of supply - the ocean.

The company's plan was to have sea planes locate schools of fish - the Harvester and plane kept in communication by wireless telephone. Electricity entered largely into the fishing operations, making it possible to stun fish for a considerable distance ahead of the boat, so that, for the time being, even shark or porpoise were made helpless and float up in front of the oncoming boat.

At night, powerful search-lights from the Harvester were directed into the water for a great distance ahead; an attraction bringing fish into the path of the boat all through its night operations.

The fishing itself was mechanical and automatic. A scoop net, 50 feet wide, 20 feet deep, extended under water forward of the boat. This net was always open and in fishing position to be pushed into schools of fish. The net converged to a throat, 28 feet in from the lips of the wide open mouth, the entire maw being of closely meshed metal work.

Conveyors at the throat of the net spilled the fish into sorting machines on the lower deck. From that point, packing house methods took care of the recovery of all the values, for food, for the industrial use of by products, and for stock feed and fertilizer. Company literature stated "Every fish is a good fish, and every part of every fish is a good part - good for some purpose. The Harvester will use everything but the smell."

While a precursor to widely used current fishing methods, the company was dissolved in 1936.

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