More southerly are the profitable fisheries for pilchards, sprats, and especially sardines—little fishes taken in vast numbers and canned or preserved in various ways. The abundance of sardines, a recent writer tells us, may be inferred from the fact that the Spanish fishermen take annually about one hundred thousand tons of these little fishes, having a value of from $400,000 to $600,000. A peculiar method of capturing the sardines at night prevails in the Adriatic. The location of the shoals of fish is literally felt out by a light sounding-line, and by means of the attraction of a fire of resinous pine the fish are slowly coaxed into some creek or estuary and surrounded with a seine. The demand for wood for use in this and other night fisheries causes a serious drain on the neighboring pine-forests.
The great fishery of the Mediterranean, however, is that for tunnies—huge fishes allied to mackerel, sometimes weighing several hundredweight, and regarded in America as poor food. They have been taken by means of pounds and strong enclosing nets ever since classical antiquity, and preserved tunny flesh is still popular in Spain, Italy, and North Africa, while the same fish is the object of one of the principal sea-industries of Japan.
But important as are the catching, preserving, and utilization of these and many other European fishes, they are far outranked by the marine fisheries for the cod and its relatives, the halibut, haddock, hake, etc., in waters about Newfoundland, Labrador, and Iceland, where also great quantities of mackerel, herring, and other food fishes are regularly obtained. The principal grounds are on the Banks of Newfoundland, which have been resorted to for more than three hundred years by men from both continents.
HAND-LINE FISHING ON THE GRAND BANKS.
The Banks of Newfoundland are a series of shoals—submerged islands, in fact—which lie off the northeastern coast of America from Cape Cod to the farther end of Newfoundland. The shallowness of the water over them makes them advantageous places for fishing, because many of the species caught remain near the bottom, and in deep water are therefore beyond convenient reach. It is possible, also, to anchor there—often a necessity.
But just here are presented some of the worst perils to which fishermen are exposed. Nowhere are old ocean’s storms worse than on these Banks, where the sand is sometimes stirred five hundred feet below the surface. The best fishing comes in winter—the season of the heaviest gales. The vessels must anchor close together, too, for the areas of good fishing are small, and if one breaks its hawser, or the anchor drags, there is great danger of drifting afoul of some neighbor, which is likely to end in the destruction of both. Then there is ever present the danger, in these latitudes of almost ceaseless fog, of being run down by the transatlantic steamers, in whose track the fishing fleets must anchor. The skipper keeps his bell tolling, or a great horn blowing, but if a steamer comes down the wind her lookout will hardly be able to hear it before it is too late to stop or change the course of the monster rushing at full speed through the thickness of mist and flying spray. “Before anything can be done the relentless iron prow cuts into the schooner, which for a moment quivers and then disappears into the depths.... One of these great iron ships might cut the bows off a fishing schooner of sixty or eighty tons and not, perhaps, experience a sufficient shock to alarm the passengers sleeping calmly in their staterooms.”
The vessels which go upon this perilous quest are the stanchest, swiftest, and withal handsomest little vessels that sail our seas. Their rig is adapted to this purpose, and spreads almost as much canvas as a racing-yacht, which, in fact, on this side of the Atlantic has been modeled from Banks fishermen. The best of them probably are those hailing from Gloucester, Mass., and these are never used for any other purpose.
The old-fashioned hand-line fishing, such as still holds a place in the mackerel fisheries—although even there it has given way in most vessels to purse-netting,—is no longer practised in the American codfishery, which now uses the trawl-line altogether, by which the men have added to the hardship and danger of their adventurous life as well as to its profits.
This trawl is not a huge dredge as is the beam-trawl of the North Sea fishermen, from which it has unfortunately copied its name, but is a strong rope between three and four hundred feet long, having at each end an anchor and a flag-buoy. It is so arranged that when it is stretched out and anchored the line will be several fathoms beneath the surface. To this line, at intervals of six feet or so, are hung short lines, each carrying a stout hook. When the fishing-ground has been reached, the captain anchors his vessel, or, if the weather permits, he sails gently to and fro. Previously, six trawls have been baited with clams brought from home, and one put in each of the six small boats which the vessel carries. Two men now put off in each of these boats and anchor the trawls at convenient distances from each other, in such a way that the trawl-line, with its fringe of hooks, shall be stretched taut and at the proper depth. How long they stay down depends on the weather—five or six hours, or from evening until morning, is the usual period. Then the men go out, and taking up the anchors at one end, haul each trawl into the boat, coiling it in the bottom and taking off the hooks each captive fish as fast as they come to it.