It is exceedingly difficult to procure reliable statistics of the total quantity of fish taken in the British seas. These can only be obtained in a crude way from the fishermen, there being no tally kept by the salesman, except of a rough kind. I made some inquiries into the London fish supply at Billingsgate, but they were unsatisfactory, as there is no register kept there of the quantity sold. Each of the wholesale men can give an idea of the total number or quantity of fish consigned to him; but even if the whole body of salesmen were to give such statistics, it would only, after all, represent a portion of the London supply, because much of the fish required for the London commissariat is sent direct by railway to private dealers. But London, although it requires a very large total of fish, seldom obtains all that its citizens could eat, nor does it by any means get all that are captured, or that are imported. Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, and other large towns in England; and Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, and Aberdeen, in Scotland, require likewise to be supplied. And besides this home demand, we send considerable quantities of our white fish to the Continent, especially in a dried or prepared state. The fishermen of the Shetland Isles, for instance, cure largely for the Spanish and other Continental markets. Finnan haddocks and pickled cod can be so prepared as to bear shipment to a long distance, and kippered salmon are found on sale everywhere, as are also pickled and smoked herrings.
The natural history of our white fish, as I have already said, is but imperfectly known. As an instance of the very limited knowledge we possess of the natural history of even our most favourite fishes, I may state that at a meeting of the British Association a few years ago, a member who read an interesting paper On the Sea Fisheries of Ireland, introduced specimens of a substance which the Irish fishermen considered to be spawn of the turbot; stating that wherever this substance was found trawling was forbidden; the supposed spawn being in reality a kind of sponge, with no other relation to fish except as being indicative of beds of mollusca, the abundance of which marks that fish are plentiful. It follows that the stoppage of the trawl on the grounds where this kind of squid is found is the result of sheer ignorance, and causes the loss in all likelihood of great quantities of the best white fish. It is not easy to say when the Gadidæ are in proper season. Some of the members of that family are used for table purposes all the year round; and as different salmon rivers have their different close-times, so undoubtedly will the white fish of different seas or firths have different spawning seasons. In reference, for instance, to so important a fish as the turbot, we are very vaguely told by Yarrell that it spawns in the spring-time, but have no indication of the particular month during which that important operation takes place, or how long the young fish take to grow. Even a naturalist so well informed as the late Mr. Wilson was of opinion that the turbot was a travelling fish, which migrated from place to place.
The combined ignorance of naturalists and fishermen has much to do with the scarcity of white fish which is now beginning to be experienced; and unless some plan be hit upon to prevent overfishing, we may some fine morning experience the same astonishment as a country gentleman’s cook, who had given directions to the gamekeeper to supply the kitchen regularly with a certain quantity of grouse. For a number of years she found no lack, but in the end the purveyor threw down the prescribed number, and told her she need look for no more from him, for on that day the last grouse had been shot. “There they are,” said the gamekeeper, “and it has taken six of us with a gun apiece to get them, and after all we have only achieved the labour which was gone through by one man some years ago.” The cook had unfortunately never considered the relation between guns and grouse.
The Gadidæ family is numerous, and its members are valuable for table purposes; three of the fishes of that genus are particularly in request—viz. whiting, cod, and haddock. These are the three most frequently eaten in a fresh state; there are others of the family which are extensively captured for the purpose of being dried and salted, among which are the ling, the tusk, etc. The haddock (Morrhua aylefinus) has ever been a favourite fish, and the quantities of it which are annually consumed are really wonderful. Vast numbers used to be taken in the Firth of Forth, but from recent inquiries at Newhaven I am led to believe that the supply has considerably decreased of late years, and that the local fishermen have to proceed to considerable distances in order to procure any quantity.
In reference to the question, “Where are the haddocks?” which is asked on another page, it is right to say that this prime fish has more than once become scarce. I have been reminded of a time, in 1790, when three of these fish were sold for 7s. 6d. in the Edinburgh market; but although there have been from time to time sudden disappearances of the haddock from particular fishing-grounds, as indeed there have been of all fish, that is a different, a totally different matter from what the fisher folk and the public have now to complain of—viz. a yearly decreasing supply. Mr. Grieve, of the Café Royal, Edinburgh, tells me that this season (August 1865), he is paying ninepence each for these fish, and is very glad to get them even at that price. I took part in a newspaper controversy about the scarcity of the haddock, and I found plenty of opponents ready to maintain that there was no scarcity, but that any quantity could be captured. In some degree that is the truth, but what is the hook-power required now to capture, “any quantity,” and how long does it take to obtain a given number, as compared with former times, when that fish was supposed to be more plentiful? Why do we require, for instance, to send to Norway and other distant places for haddocks and other white fish? the only answer I can imagine is that we cannot get enough at home. As to the general scarcity of white fish, the late Mr. Methuen, the fish-curer, wrote a year or two ago:—“This morning I am told that an Edinburgh fishmonger has bought all the cod brought into Newhaven at 5s. to 7s. each. I recollect when I cured thousands of cod at 3d. and 4d. each; they were caught between Burntisland and Kincardine, on which ground not a cod is now to be got; and at the great cod emporium of Cellardyke, the cod-fishing, instead of three score for a boat’s fishing, has dwindled down to about half-a-dozen cod.”
THE GADIDÆ FAMILY.
The old belief in the migratory habits of fish comes again into notice in connection with the haddock. Pennant having taught us that the haddock appeared periodically in great quantities about mid-winter, that theory is still believed, although the appearance of this fish in shoals may be easily explained, from the local habits of most of the denizens of the great deep. It is said that “in stormy weather, the haddock refuses every kind of bait, and seeks refuge among marine plants in the deepest parts of the ocean, where it remains until the violence of the elements is somewhat subsided.” This fish does not grow to any great size; it usually averages about five pounds. I prefer it as a table fish to the cod; the very best haddocks are taken on the coast of Ireland. The scarcity of fresh haddocks may in some degree be accounted for by the immense quantities which are converted into “Finnan haddies”—a well-known breakfast luxury no longer confined to Scotland. It is difficult to procure genuine Finnans, smoked in the original way by means of peat-reek; like everything else for which there is a great demand, Finnan haddocks are now “manufactured” in quantity; and, to make the trade a profitable one, they are cured by the hundred in smoking-houses built for the purpose, and are smoked by burning wood or sawdust, which, however, does not give them the proper goût. In fact the wood-smoked Finnans, except that they are fish, have no more the right flavour than Scotch marmalade would have were it manufactured from turnips instead of bitter oranges. Fifty years ago it was different; then the haddocks were smoked in small quantities in the fishing villages between Aberdeen and Stonehaven, and entirely over a peat fire. The peat-reek imparted to them that peculiar flavour which gained them a reputation. The fisher-wives along the north-east coast used to pack small quantities of these delicately-cured fish into a basket, and give them to the guard of the “Defiance” coach, which ran between Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and the guard brought them to town, confiding them for sale to a brother who dealt in provisions; and it is known that out of the various transactions which thus arose, individually small though they must have been, the two made, in the course of time, a handsome profit. The fame of the smoked fish rapidly spread, so that cargoes used to be brought by steamboat, and Finnans are now carried by railway to all parts of the country with great celerity, the demand being so great as to induce men to foist on the public any kind of cure they can manage to accomplish; indeed smoked codlings are extensively sold for Finnan haddocks. Good smoked haddocks of the Moray Firth or Aberdeen cure can seldom now be had, even in Edinburgh, under the price of sixpence per pound weight.
The common cod (Morrhua vulgaris) is, as the name implies, one of our best-known fishes, and it was at one time very plentiful and cheap. It is found in the deep waters of all our northern seas, but has never been known in the Mediterranean. It has been largely captured on the coasts of Scotland, and, as is elsewhere mentioned, it occurs in profusion on the shores of Newfoundland, where its plentifulness led to a great fishery being established. The cod is extremely voracious, and eats up most greedily the smaller inhabitants of the seas; it grows to a large size, and is very prolific in the perpetuation of its kind. A cod-roe has more than once been found to be half the gross weight of the fish, and specimens of the female have been caught with upwards of eight millions of eggs; but of course it cannot be expected that in the great waste of waters all the ova will be fertilised, or that any but a small percentage of the fish will ever arrive at maturity. This fish spawns in mid-winter, but there are no very reliable data to show when it becomes reproductive. My own opinion has already been expressed that the cod is an animal of slow growth, and I would venture to say that it is at least three years old before it is endowed with any breeding power. I may call attention here to one of the causes that must tend to render the fish scarce. As if the natural enemies of the young fish were not sufficient to aid in its extirpation, and the loss of the ova from causes over which man has no control not enough in the way of destruction, there is a commerce in cod-roe, and enormous quantities of it, as I have mentioned in the preceding chapter, are used in France as ground-bait for the sardine fishery! The roe of this fish is also frequently made use of at table; a cod-roe of from two to four pounds in weight can unfortunately be bought for a mere trifle, but it ought to cost a good few pounds instead of a few pence. I have elsewhere stated that the quantity of eggs yielded by a female cod is more than three millions: supposing only a third of them to come to life—that is one million—and that a tenth part of that number, viz. one hundred thousand, becomes in some shape—that is, either as codling or cod—fit for table uses, what should be the value of the cod-roe that is carelessly consumed at table? If each fish be taken as of the value of sixpence, the amount would be £2500. But supposing that only twenty full-grown codfish resulted from the three millions of eggs; these, at two and sixpence each, would represent the sum of fifty shillings as the possible produce of one dish, which, in the shape of cod-roe, cost only about as many farthings!