The text reads:
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| 1818-1845. The drift of nets per boat contained 4500 square yards. | 1857-1863. The drift of nets per boat contained 16,800 square yards. | |
| Bottom row. | ||
| 1818-1824. The average per boat 125¼ crans. | During the 10 years 1841-50 the average catch per boat was 112 crans. | 1857-1863. The average per boat 82 crans. |
Before concluding this chapter I wish to say a few words about a point of herring economy, which has been already alluded to in connection with the special commission appointed to inquire into the trawling system—viz. as to the natural enemies of the herring, the most ruthless of which are undoubtedly of the fish kind, and whose destructive power, some people assert, dwarfs into insignificance all that man can do against the fish:—“Consider,” say the commissioners, “the destruction of large herring by cod and ling alone. It is a very common thing to find a codfish with six or seven large herrings, of which not one has remained long enough to be digested, in his stomach. If, in order to be safe, we allow a codfish only two herrings per diem, and let him feed on herrings for only seven months in the year, then we have 420 herring as his allowance during that time; and fifty codfish will equal one fisherman in destructive power. But the quantity of cod and ling taken in 1861, and registered by the Fishery Board, was over 80,000 cwts. On an average thirty codfish go to one cwt. of dried fish. Hence, at least 2,400,000 will equal 48,000 fishermen. In other words, the cod and ling caught on the Scotch coasts in 1861, if they had been left in the water, would have caught as many herring as a number of fishermen equal to all those in Scotland, and six thousand more, in the same year; and as the cod and ling caught were certainly not one tithe part of those left behind, we may fairly estimate the destruction of herring by these voracious fish alone as at least ten times as great as that effected by all the fishermen put together.” As to only one of the numerous land enemies of the herring, the late Mr. Wilson, in his Tour round Scotland, calculated that the gannets or solan geese frequenting one island alone—St. Kilda—picked out of the water for their food 214 millions of herrings every summer! The shoals that can withstand these destructive agencies must indeed be vast, especially when taken in connection with the millions of herrings that are accidentally killed by the nets, and never brought ashore for food purposes. The work accomplished by these natural enemies of the herring, which has been going on during all time, does not however affect my argument, that by the concentration on one shoal of a thousand boats per annum, with an annually-increasing net-power, we both so weaken and frighten the shoal that it becomes in time unproductive. As the late Mr. Methuen said in one of his addresses: “We have been told that we are to have dominion over the fish of the sea, but dominion does not mean extermination.”
Although Scotland is the main seat of the herring-fishery, I should like to see statistics, similar to those collected in Scotland, taken at a few English ports for a period of years, in order that we might obtain additional data from which to arrive at a right conclusion as to the increase or decrease of the fishery for herring. It is possible to collect statistics of the cereal and root crops of the country; it was done for all Scotland during three seasons, and it was well and quickly accomplished. What can be done for the land may also, I think, be done for the sea. I believe the present Board for Scotland to be most useful in aiding the regulation of the fishery, and in collecting statistics of the catch; their functions, however, might be considerably extended, and elevated to a higher order of usefulness, especially as regards the various questions in connection with the natural history of the fish. The operations of the Board might likewise be extended for a few seasons to a dozen of the largest English fishing-ports, in order that we might obtain confirmation of what is so often rumoured, the falling off of our supplies of sea-food. There are various obvious abuses also in connection with the economy of our fisheries that ought to be remedied, and which an active Board could remedy and keep right; and a body of naturalists and economists might easily be kept up at a slight toll of say a guinea per boat.
CHAPTER VII.
THE WHITE-FISH FISHERIES.
Difficulty of obtaining Statistics of our White-Fish Fisheries—Ignorance of the Natural History of the White Fish—“Finnan Haddies”—The Gadidæ Family: the Cod, Whiting, etc.—The Turbot and other Flat Fish—When Fish are in Season—How the White-Fish Fisheries are carried on—The Cod and Haddock Fishery—Line-Fishing—The Scottish Fishing Boats—Loss of Boats on the Scottish Coasts—Storms in Scotland—Trawl-Net Fishing—Description of a Trawler—Evidence on the Trawl Question.
It is among the white fish, as they are called, that we find the chief food-fishes of this kingdom—as the haddock, cod, whiting, ling, sole, flounder, turbot, and skate,—all of which, and about a dozen others (not including the mackerel), equally good for food, belong to two well-known fish families—Gadidæ and Pleuronectidæ—and give employment in their capture to the two best-known instruments of destruction, the line and the trawl.