PRAWNS AND PRAWN-POOLS.
DURING the past summer the price of prawns has risen higher than that of any shell-fish except the oyster, and if the present prejudice against the "native" continues, the prawn will probably take its place as the most esteemed luxury procured from the sea. At the end of May the fishermen received as much as 23s. a hundred for their prawns, the Derby-day marking the highest price obtained during the summer. Excess of demand, not scarcity of fish, caused this welcome addition to the fishermen's earnings, for the catch of the season has been among the best known for years. Like the lobsters, prawns do best in a hot summer, though it is difficult to imagine how "dry weather" affects creatures living in the sea, and as the hot summer of 1893 was one of the best on record for the lobster-fishery, while the cold spring of 1894 was one of the worst, so the number and size of the prawns in 1896 has beaten all recent records. Last summer the fish were scarce and small. The average size was from sixty or seventy to the pound weight, and the catches were poor. In the present season round the shores of the Isle of Wight they have averaged fifty to the pound, and thirty prawns to the pot have been commonly taken. One fortunate fisherman made a catch of nine hundred prawns in a single night, leaving a profit of nearly £10 for his trouble. In such good times the prawn-fisherman has what the sailors call "a soft berth," and visitors to the seaside with plenty of time on their hands and a little money to invest, might do worse than imitate his example and compete in the business. In one item only of his stock-in-trade has the professional fisherman distinctly the better of the amateur. He grows his withes in the sides of the cliffs, just where the springs break out and ooze into the beach, and he makes his prawn-pots himself during odd times on winter evenings. They are exactly like a lobster-pot, though the opening is smaller, not wider than the breadth of four fingers, and the osiers more closely set. If bought new they cost is. each. But the work of baiting and setting can be done by any amateur. At low-tide the fisherman steps down to the rocks, and turning over the sea- weed catches hundreds of small "king-crabs." With these he baits the pots, and at 4 p.m. rows out to the reef and drops his pots among the valleys and hollows which lie between the submarine " kopjes " of the reef. Early next morning he rows out, hauls in his pots, boils his prawns for about a minute in fresh water, and they are ready for market. The really fine large prawns, called "spawn prawns" by the men, are caught early in the season. After July these disappear, and the smaller fish are caught. This forms the whole art and practice of the prawn-fishery as usually known to the long-shore fisherman. Neither is his knowledge of the natural history of his quarry extensive, for though he knows that prawns shed their shells, and that they do this oftener when young than when adult—the "weakness" from which, he contends, pre- vents small prawns from climbing into the pots, and therefore saves him the trouble of sorting them—he always maintains that the small prawns caught late in the season are "big shrimps." This is a curious mistake, for they are more unlike than the wasp and the bee. The prawn has a long, toothed sabre projecting from his head, staring eyes fixed on the end of stalks, six long -antenna, sometimes twice the length of its body, and a pair of fine double claws like a lobster's. When in the water, unboiled, the prawn is elegantly striped, like a tiger, with dark-brown lines follow- ing the joints of his armour, and is altogether a very fine and fierce-looking fellow. The shrimp, on the other hand, has only two long antennm, hooks instead of pincers on his main claws, and is spotted and not striped. As the French sportsman said of the French partridge as dis- tinguished from the English partridge, "his foliage" is quite different. So, in general, are his habits. Shrimps love sandy or muddy bottoms, but prawns, like lobsters, are mainly dwellers in the rocks. There among the sea-lakes and ribbon-grass, and under the seaweeds which hang like mangrove-roots from the big rocks, the half-transparent prawns live invisible and unvisited, captured only by night in the wicker-traps of the fisherman, and inaccessible to the
naturalist who desirevia asini sunt.) So ifaintance when at
home. -r•••••-1 — But there are other pools of a very different kind in which prawns live and thrive, while their existence is unsuspected by the fishermen who are busy catching their relations out at sea. These are the backwaters or soakage pools of estuaries, beyond the limits of ordinary tides, or enclosed by dams, beneath which the waters soak and form inner lakes of brackish water. These are the ordinary haunts of "estuary fishes,"—flontiders, crabs, plaice, sea-worms, sand-eels, and, where the bottom is muddy, of oysters. In one of these .pools the writer found and made acquaintance with a colony of prawns. The history of the pool and the origin of its inhabitants are somewhat obscure. It lies within the banks of a reclamation, and forms a shallow sheet of water, some two hundred yards in length. A broad embankment separates it from the sea, and on its stony margin and the adjacent :fiats land-plants, thistles, and docks have mixed with the samphire and sea michaelmas daisy (aster maritime), now in -full flower, and great flocks of linnets feed upon the seeds. A brood of five cygnets were hatched upon an island in the pool, and the waters, mainly supplied by soakage under the embankment, have shrunk during the dry summer. Yet 'this pool, searched for food from daylight to dark by the swans and haunted by sea-birds, swarms with prawns. Their great gathering-place is on either side of a con- duit, passing beneath a causeway thrown across the pools. A. current sets through this, east or west, according to the direction of the wind, carrying with it a vast store of 'minute animal and vegetable atoms. Green, thread-like water- weeds grow on either side, and the water is dark and thick near the bottom. The prawn is semi-transparent, and far less .visible, even in clear water, than a fish. It would be impossible for a shoal even of small fishes to remain unnoticed in such a place, yet the presence of the prawns is never suspected. As the visitor approaches, the surface of the water is agitated lor a moment as if some one had cast handfuls of dust upon it. If the inquirer lies down and keeps his face still at a .distance of a foot from the water, after gazing into the deeps for a few minutes he becomes aware of something like a light greyish dappled cloud gathering towards the surface from the bottom and sides of the pooL As the units composing the 'cloud draw nearer he becomes farther aware of a forest of waving, hair-like antenna3 and many hundreds of pairs of 'round, protruding eyes, set on stalks, and staring into his own with a fixed lack - lustre gaze. These are the -eyes of the prawns, who are rising gradually to the -surface and staring him out of countenance. If he -keeps still they conclude that the face above them is a bit of wood, or perhaps the figure-head of a ship, and rise to within a few inches of the surface, though every prawn keeps its eyes fixed upon him. Moreover, they hang tail downwards in the water, and, keeping "bows on to the .enemy," present only their faces, sabre-like horns, antennm, and staring eyes for inspection.. No one seeing them from this point of view would readily identify them as prawns, and it is only when confidence is quite restored that they abandon the "bows on" position and cruise about in the pool. Though so crowded together that an ordinary landing-net would ,capture a score at a dip, they do not appear to be feeding, or to have any particular object in view except to wait in the sluggish current of the conduit. "Loitering with intent" is the police-court phrase which best describes their attitude ; but every solid particle which comes through the channel -seems to undergo some sort of examination by their antennm, and occasionally a piece of weed is taken in the pincer- elaws and tasted. When thus engaged they swim or creep slowly forward by means of their forelegs. If a sudden movement is made their power of instan- taneous disappearance is explained. Each and every mem- ber of the company springs backwards as if shot out of a catapult for a foot or more towards the bottom, and the slight disturbance made by hundreds of dimples rising to the surface distracts the eye from the submarine retreat of the prawns. When reappearing their rise is as silent and gradual as theii flight is sudden and violent.
It is worth noting thai, close to the site of this natural prawn-pool are abandoned oybfer hatcheries and ponds which proved a failure. In view of the present value of prawns it inigut be worth while in suitable plazYs to try the experiment c)f making artificial pools for their gro vth and maintenance.
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