THE HARVEST OF THE SEA.*
THE main purpose of the new book by Mr. G. C. L. Howell, acting secretary of the British Fisheries Society, is to bring the biologist and the practical fisherman into closer contact by showing how much each has to learn from the other about our sea fisheries. Mr. Howell acts, as it were, as an interpreter between the men of science and the men of business, and between them both and the public whose interest must be aroused before the Government will condescend to take the fishery question seriously. Thus we find in this book, as in no other that we know of, a survey of both the commercial and the scientific aspects of the fisheries and an indication of the main lines upon which research must proceed for the benefit of the industry. He begins with a brief account of the fishing fleets—the drifter fleet which works round the coast in search of herring, and the trawler fleet which catches " white fish " and is subdivided into the south-eastern, north-eastern, northern deep-sea, south-western deep-sea, and western squadrons, each with its own special aims :- " A captain bound for Iceland, for instance, from the Humber will seldom shoot a trawl in the North Sea. And there leaps to the mind the case of an aged skipper, who had asked for a ship and had been given a little North Sea trawler to fish during the War. He was told to take her into the North Sea and refused I'm an Iceland man, I am.' So he went to Iceland in very dirty weather, and filled her with fish fill her decks were awash. Incidentally he sank a U-boat, and (also incidentally) was badly holed, and himself hit with shrapnel. He landed his fish and won the D.S.C."
The most productive fishing-grounds are in the southern part of the North Sea. Next in importance are the Iceland fisheries, and next again the northern part of -the North Sea above a line from the Tees to the Skaw. The herring fishery is by far the largest, yielding in 1913 611,000 tons, valued at £4,572,000. The cod fishery comes second (for the same year), with 200,000 tons valued at £2,300,000, followed by haddock to the value of £1,891,000, plaice to the value of £1,095,000, and then, in succession, hake, soles, halibut, whiting, turbot, skate, mackerel, lemon soles, ling, coalfish and dabs, with a total value of several millions more. Far more than a million tons of food fishes were landed in our ports in 1913.
So large an industry, supplying cheap food to our crowded cities and training hardy seamen ready to help again in the defence of our shores as they did during the great War, clearly deserves every possible encouragement from men of science. Mr. Howell's object is to show how much there is to find out concerning the life-history of the principal fishes, which he takes in order and considers separately. The fishery statistics for 1920, to which he devotes an appendix, are peculiarly significant. It was thought that the seas round our coasts had been over- fished and that the respite afforded by the War, when the Dogger -Bank, for instance, was rendered almost inaccessible by mine- fields, would greatly increase the supply of fish. Yet the returns show that the British steam fishing fleets in 1920 landed less fish per vessel than in 1913. In the earlier year 1,754 vessels, with an average of 200 tons, landed 530,000 tons, or 302 tons per vesseL In the later year 1,964 vessels, with an average of 220 tons, landed 580,000 tons, or 297 tons per vesseL In the • Ocean Research and the Great Fisheries. By G. C. L. Howell. Oxford:
► t the Clarendon cress. [185. net.]
North Sea, off Iceland, off Rockall, in the Irish Sea, the English Channel and the Bristol Channel, the average daily catch per
vessel was the highest recorded since 1905, but elsewhere the average was no higher, and often much lower, than in the year before the War. The English fishing industry expected a catch three times as great as that which was brought in. The dis- appointment, coupled with the enormous increase in the cost of working, brought on a crisis which is by no means over. Here, however, we are only concerned with the obvious inference that a mere abstention from fishing may not in itself increase the harvest of the sea. It is possible,.indeed, that all the puny efforts of man have little effect on the fish, and that a slight change of temperature in the water, causingthe minute organisms which serve as fishes' food to diminish, may have a far greater influence on the population of the sea than all the trawler fleets of Europe. Thus it is known that 1904 and 1912 were unusually good years for cod, herring and haddock, and it is conjectured by Dr. Hjort, the Norwegian biologist, that for some unknown reason there was an exceptionally large supply of diatoms at the time when the young fish began to feed, so that an unusual number of them survived.
The variations in the annual supply of different fishes are astonishing, and cannot be assigned to any human agency, Take, for example, the mackerel. There used to be a profitable mackerel fishery in the early summer off Yarmouth till, in the 'sixties, it suddenly ceased. The cessation was attributed to the sailing trawlers. But towards 1890 the mackerel began to come with the herring in September. In 1906 they suddenly reappeared off the Norfolk coast in the early summer. A couple of years later, there was a glut of mackerel not in May and June but in November. These strange variations were evidently not caused by the trawlers, and the causes remain to be discovered. It is obvious that if the owners of trawlers knew where and when to expect the mackerel, they would be spared many fruitless voyages. Similar facts are recorded about the haddock, which was apparently declining in numbers between 1906 and 1913, but showed a great increase in 1919. Again, very large quantities of hake have been taken this year off the Smalls, near Milford Haven, on a fishing ground that was thought to have been exhausted a generation ago by the trawlers. The hake were following a great school of large herring, which have never before been caught off the Smalls. The history of the hake, it may be added, is of special interest, so far as it is known.; the deep-sea hake fishery dates only from 1903, and was accidentally begun by a skipper who was blown out of his course off the Kerry coast and, in sheer desperation, shot his trawl in 120 fathoms—a depth at which trawling was then thought to be unprofitable—with the result that he made a large catch of hake. Mr. Howell adduces much interesting evidence from fishermen as well as from biologists and statisticians, and he gives many illustrations and several maps. If he asks many questions that are at present unanswerable, he thereby strengthens his case for the more generous endowment and more practical organization of fishery research. A few thousand pounds expended in this way would repay the country a hundred- fold by increasing the produce of the great fishing industry and reducing the price of fish.
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