Big Fish
A Draught of Fishes. By F. D. Ommanney. (Longmans, 36s.) DR. OMMANNEY is, in the first place, I suppose, an academic, a professional ichthyologist who has divided his time between lecturing and ad- vising colonial and foreign governments on fishery research. But for an academic his life has been a notably active one, cruising in the Antarctic in Discovery II, working at whaling stations, surveying—at first hand—the hitherto unknown fishing potential of the Indian Ocean shallows between Mauritius and the Seychelles, discovering from Breton tuna-fishermen the methods that might lead to the capture of the great surface-feeding predators that run the coast northwards from Zanzibar.
A Draught of Fishes reflects this duality, for it is partly Straight popular science (of the best kind, lucid and accurate), and part a vivid narrative of success and failure in the location of new fishing grounds, particularly in recent years when the development of an effective native fishing industry can make an enormous difference to the economy of a new nation in Africa or Asia.
Dr. Ommanney's own fervour and crusad ing spirit would be enough to make his book a fascinating one, but, above and beyond this, he has a genuinely poetic apprehension of the alien mysteries of the sea. He writes of the underwater spring, when the sea becomes dark green and opaque from a huge florescence of• plant plankton, soon to be browsed upon by the animal plankton in the summer months. He writes. of the abyssal plain of the Atlantic, where _in 3,000 fathoms the bottom consists of the dead remains of plankton, the skeletons of microscopic creatures whose soft parts have decayed away? the teeth of sharks, the earbones of whales and the dust of meteorites, visitors from outer space.
But he is equally at home in the practical, modern world of the surface, the world of far- ranging trawlers equipped with Decca Navigators that not only sweep the sea bed but fish at mid- water for pelagic species like herring with hydro- dynamic kite trawls; a world where only the skipper remains unchanged, pawky, demanding strong, syrupy tea every hour on the hour. I know a Scottish salmon-fisherman (one who ' operates with rod and line) who contrives a sharp row with his wife before setting off for the river: He claims that this brings him good luck (propitiation of the jealous Earth Mother?), so even sophisticated urbanKlwellers, if they are anglers, share in the deeply superstitious nature of fisherfolk. Mr. Anson spent many years among the fishermen of the East Coast of Scotland, and in Fisher Folk-Lore he gives us a wealth of stories and traditions that he has collected: just in time, perhaps, for the old, close-knit fishing com-. munities are breaking up fast.
CLIVE GAMMON
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