OUR SEA AND SALMON FISHERIES.
In the department of fishing-industries the march of scientific inquiry has already borne good fruit. The influence of the weather, or more properly speaking of the variations of temperature, on the plentifulness or scarcity of our food-fishes, has grown in importance as an element in determining the success or failure of the herring-fishery, for example; and at more than one fishing-station thermometrical observations are daily made by the fishermen, and reported to the meteorological authorities, who in their turn deduce generalisations and laws from the observations thus recorded. Thus the teachings of the formerly despised ‘science’ are beginning to bear fruit, and to be openly and fully recognised; and in the future, the fisherman, as a result of the generalisations just alluded to, may be able to determine with tolerable accuracy, before setting sail for the fishing-grounds, the chances of a successful or unsuccessful day’s labour. Add to this, that, with increased knowledge of the conditions of life, development, and general history of our food-fishes, wise legislation may provide for the protection of these fishes and for the determination of the proper periods for the exercise of the fisher’s art, and it will be owned that the gains from a scientific investigation of the fishing-industries are simply incalculable.
For these reasons we have peculiar pleasure in noting the appearance of a small volume, under the title of Sea Fisheries, by E. W. H. Holdsworth, and Salmon Fisheries, by Archibald Young, Commissioner of Scotch Salmon Fisheries (London: E. Stanford. 1877). The work is produced under the joint authorship of two gentlemen long connected with this important branch of British industry. To Mr E. W. H. Holdsworth has been allotted the task of giving an account of the sea fisheries of Britain; whilst Mr Archibald Young, one of the Commissioners of Scotch Salmon Fisheries, has undertaken the task of giving an account of the interests connected with the capture of the king of fishes. Mr Holdsworth has to do with the salt water, Mr Young chiefly with the fresh.
Within the last sixty or seventy years, the herring fisheries of Scotland, chiefly prosecuted on the north-east coast, have risen to be a most important national industry and source of wealth, the value of the catch in a good year amounting to between two and three millions sterling. Needing no cultivation, the sea yields an annual harvest almost incredible in amount. Of course much capital is embarked; but without the hardihood, the enterprise, and the daring risks encountered by the fishermen, all would be unavailing. It is seen by a late Report, that in the united fisheries of herrings, cod, and ling, in 1876, nearly fifteen thousand boats, decked and undecked, were engaged, the total value of which amounted to upwards of a million sterling. Ever on the outlook for what will advance the interests of the herring fishery, the capitalists engaged in the business have latterly added a fast-sailing steamer to the fleets of boats; by which means herrings caught at a considerable distance are transferred from the boats to the steamer, rapidly brought into port, and being there properly prepared, are despatched by railway to various parts of the United Kingdom.
Railways, by facilitating transit, have been immensely advantageous to all kinds of fisheries. It might now be said that by this ready means of transit the most inland towns in the country are now as well supplied with fresh fish as towns on the coast; in many cases better. Ice has also played an important part in the transmission of fish to distant places. Salmon being thus preserved till it reaches the market, arrives in the best condition, and is sent to table fresh as when caught. One has only to look at the quantities of beautiful salmon and other fish spread out on marble benches of the fishmongers in any of our larger towns, to see what railways and ice have done for this branch of industry.
Mr Holdsworth expresses strong regret that the prospects of the Irish fisheries are not by any means of a promising kind, as far as the cultivation of the art or industry is concerned. All authorities agree in regarding the coasts of Ireland in most instances as representing fishing-grounds in which stores of wealth lie unheeded and uncared for. This is a state of matters much to be deplored, for the sake of all parties concerned—fishermen, consumers, and the nation at large. Some years ago, when we were in Ireland, we heard it mentioned that much of the fish sold in Dublin was supplied by fishermen from the coast of Wales; and we likewise heard that large quantities of dried white-fish were introduced to Portrush by fishermen from Islay and other western isles of Scotland. Though it is stated that the famine of thirty years ago has had much to do with the depressed state of the Irish fisheries, and that emigration has also affected them, we yet fail to see why, by a little enterprise, the still resident natives should not be able to beat both the Welsh and Scotch out of their own market.
As regards the salmon fisheries, Mr Young leads us into a region which is still in some particulars a field of debate and controversy. There are very few readers, it may be presumed, who are ignorant of the controversies, for instance, which have been carried on concerning the correct answer to the question, ‘Are parr the young of salmon?’—a query which Mr Young, along with the great majority of naturalists, answers unhesitatingly in the affirmative. The natural history of the salmon forms the starting-point of all knowledge of the fish, and of the information necessary for determining the conditions under which it may be properly and successfully caught—the terms ‘properly’ and ‘successfully’ in this case being taken as including the best interests of the fish and its race, as well as the interests of its human captors. Briefly detailed, the life-history of a salmon may be said to begin with the ascent of the parent-fishes in autumn and early winter to the upper reaches of our rivers for the purpose of depositing their eggs. In each salmon-mother it has been calculated about nine hundred eggs exist for every pound of her weight, and these eggs she deposits in a trench, excavated by aid of the jaw, in the gravelly bed of the stream. Fertilised after being deposited, by the milt of the male parent, the latter covers the eggs with gravel by means of his fins—the tail-fin being, as far as can be ascertained, the chief agent and means in effecting this necessary action. Such eggs as escape the attack of enemies—and of these, in the shape of aquatic birds and of other fishes, the salmon-ova have more than enough—undergo development, and are hatched in from ninety to one hundred and thirty days.
It would be an interesting study were we to trace the stages through which the young fish becomes evolved from its simple germ, and the wondrous formation of tissues and organs out of the soft jelly-like matter of which the egg is primarily composed. But want of space forbids; and our readers must therefore fancy for themselves the process whereby the hidden artist Nature works through development, and at length shapes out the young salmon, or ‘parr.’ It may be mentioned in proof of the small proportion borne by the salmon-eggs actually deposited, to those developed, that authorities agree in stating that out of three thousand eggs deposited, scarcely one egg may survive—so terrible is the destruction of young salmon. This fact alone, as Mr Young argues, should tell powerfully as an argument in favour of artificial propagation; since out of three thousand eggs which are thus hatched, at least one thousand young fishes may be successfully reared.
The curious fact is noticed that in most if not all broods of salmon, half of the parrs will become ‘smolts’—as they are called in their next stage—at the end of a year or so, whilst the other half will not become smolts until after the lapse of two years and more. This incongruity, if we may so term it, has led to the questions, ‘Do the parrs become smolts between thirteen and fifteen months after they have left the egg, or at the age of two years and two months?’ Both questions may apparently be answered in the affirmative, since each brood exhibits this peculiar feature of some of its members coming to the smolt-stage long before the others. Mr Young remarks on the authority of a salmon-breeder in the north, that about eight per cent. of the salmon hatched by this gentleman became smolts at the end of the first year; about sixty per cent. at the end of the second year; and about thirty-two per cent. at the end of the third year. These facts would seem to indicate that the end of the second year is the most natural period for the assumption of the smolt-guise, which, as distinguished from that of the parr, exhibits a beautiful coat of silvery mail.
The parr, it may be remarked, dies if placed in sea-water, whereas the smolt thrives in the latter element. On reaching the sea, the young smolt may measure from four to five inches. After a residence in the sea of some six or eight weeks, the smolt returns to its river as a ‘grilse,’ which varies from five to eight or nine pounds in weight, according to the time it has remained in the sea. After returning to its river the grilse spawns, and then returns to the sea. The features of the mature salmon are now apparent, and the fish increases in size after each such annual migration to the sea. Indeed nothing is more extraordinary in the history of the salmon than its rapid increase and growth after these periodical migrations to salt water. Three salmon which weighed ten, eleven and a half, and twelve and a half pounds as they were migrating seawards, were duly marked; and on being caught six months afterwards when returning to the fresh water, were found to have increased in weight to the extent of seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen pounds respectively. Although salmon usually return to the rivers in which they first saw the light, yet it has been ascertained that the practice is not an invariable one. There is no good reason why one river should not suit a salmon as well as another, and in their wide migrations these fishes are exceedingly likely to enter rivers other than their native streams.
One of the most interesting topics touched upon by Mr Young in his observations, is that regarding the relative late or early development of salmon in different Scotch rivers. Prefacing, that a ‘clean’ salmon is a fish that has been for some time in the sea, it has been generally believed that rivers which issue from a lake are ‘early’ rivers—or in other words that they are streams which clean salmon will ascend in the early spring. But this idea receives little or no support from facts as they stand. Many early Scotch rivers have no lake heads; whilst many Scotch rivers which run out of or through lakes are late rivers. Mr Frank Buckland thinks a river’s ‘earliness’ in the matter of salmon depends on its proportion of mileage in length to its square mileage of ‘catchment’—that is of the land-area from which the river is fed. This, however, seems to us a whimsical theory, and might be disproved by facts. As regards the ‘earliness’ of rivers, Mr Young’s theory is that much depends on temperature; in fact, temperature is known to be the chief cause which regulates the distribution of life in the sea, and there is no one fact, so far as we are aware, which can be said to militate against his views. His theory is, however, being tested by the Scottish Meteorological Society at Inverugie; by the Duke of Richmond, on the Spey; by the Duke of Sutherland, on two early and two late rivers in Sutherlandshire; and by the Tweed Commissioners—the method of testing being by thermometers applied to the fresh water of the rivers, and to the sea near their mouths.
The latter part of the volume under notice is occupied with statements relative to salmon fishery laws and legislation, a subject in which the author is naturally deeply interested, and in which our knowledge of the salmon naturally culminates when the fish is regarded from an economic standpoint. In Scotland, it seems we are far behind England and Ireland in respect that there are no Inspectors of salmon fisheries empowered to make annual inspections and reports on the Scotch salmon fisheries! And this fact becomes the more inexplicable, and the more urgently demands remedy, when we consider that the Scotch fisheries are many times as valuable as those of our English neighbours. Then also, Mr Young has a most justifiable grumble at the fact that, in our statutes, there are very inadequate provisions made for the removal of artificial and natural obstructions in salmon rivers, and for the prevention of pollutions; and no close-time for trout or char. The importance of clearing away natural obstructions to the ascent of the salmon in rivers is well exemplified when it is found that in Scotland no less than 478 miles of river and loch are thus closed against these fishes. No less forcibly shewn is the vexatious fact that rivers are polluted and rendered unfitted for breeding-streams by means and methods which the River Pollution Commissioners in their Reports declare to be preventable at a moderate cost, without injury to the manufactures with which they are connected.
Besides pollution, two things are especially detrimental to the Scottish salmon fisheries. The first to be mentioned, is the abominable practice of building weirs across rivers in order to send water into mill-lades, and the ignoring of the law that requires that the water shall be periodically diverted into the river again. Certain proprietors, to make the most of their lands, give perpetual leases of ground to manufacturers of one kind or other, with liberty to build a weir and take water to turn their machinery. There may be provisions in the lease as there is in law to the effect that the withdrawal of water shall cease during the night and on Sundays. Such provisions are, however, in many instances neglected, as giving too much trouble. The result is, that the whole river, or very nearly the whole, except in times of flood, is diverted into the mill-lade, whereby trout and salmon are unable to surmount the weir, and are effectually barred from getting to the upper part of the stream. In plain terms, by the selfishness of a proprietor (or a pair of them, one on each side), all who dwell on the river above the weir are deprived of the fish which nature had bountifully assigned to them. Already in these pages we have alluded to a scandalous case of this kind on the Tweed.
The second of the two things which act detrimentally on the Scottish salmon fisheries is the circumstance that certain landed proprietors near the mouths of some rivers possess a right to establish nets for the purpose of catching all the salmon that attempt to go up the stream. We do not contest the legality of their arrangements. We only speak of the cruel way it acts on the rights of all who live in the upper parts of the river, and on whose waters the salmon have bred. While the lower proprietors catch the great bulk of the fish, those higher up get but a miserable remnant. During the whole of the time that the nets are on, the lower proprietors have a practical monopoly of the fishings. Is that at all reasonable? As a consequence, first of the weirs, and second of the netting system of the lower proprietors, there is evoked throughout the upper part of rivers in Scotland, a gloomy and almost vengeful hatred of the existing salmon-fishing system. Of course the higher and middle classes take no part in demonstrating their sense of the injustice that is committed. The lower classes, less scrupulous, and indignant at the rapacity of the weir-owners and lower proprietors, take such salmon as they can get hold of in spawning-time, thus destroying by myriads in embryo what should have been a vast national advantage. Detesting as we do all sorts of poaching and irregularities, we are glad that the Commissioners appointed to investigate the condition of the Scottish salmon fisheries, have laid stress upon the miserable imperfections to which we have ventured to draw attention.
Mr Young informs us that in 1874, as many as 32,180 boxes of Scotch salmon were sent to the London market alone, the estimated value of which might possibly be L.321,800. It seems to us, however, a hard case that the great bulk of such valuable property should be secured by proprietors at or near the mouths of the several rivers, to the exclusion of those in the upper reaches of the streams, who ought to have an equal right to participate in the annual fish-harvest. Free-trade in salmon-fishing, so much as lies within the limits of strict justice, is still in expectation. We commend the subject to the further consideration of Frank Buckland, Mr Young, and brother-anglers.