Part 5

But since 1868 much has changed. Beam-trawls continued to be increasingly used down to 1893, since which date they have been replaced, in steam-trawlers, by the more powerful otter-trawl. There has been an immense increase in the employment of steam-vessels. In 1883 the number of steamers was 225, with a tonnage of 6,654 tons; in 1892 the steamers numbered 627, with a tonnage of 28,271. During the same time the number of first-class sailing-vessels had sunk from 8,058 to 7,319, whilst the tonnage was practically stationary--244,097 tons in 1883, as compared with 244,668 tons in 1892. The introduction of the use of ice, which took place about 1850, and the invention of various methods of renewing and aerating the water in the fish-tanks, enabled the boats to remain much longer on the fishing-grounds, and to waste much less time in voyaging to and from the ports where the fish is landed. Further, the time spent on the grounds was appreciably lengthened by the employment of ‘carriers,’ which collect the fish from the fleet of trawlers and carry it to port. This process of ‘fleeting,’ as it is called, at first confined to the sailing-smacks, is still used by the large Hull fleets of steam-trawlers which provide Billingsgate and more recently, Hull, itself with daily supplies of trawled fish fresh from the fishing-grounds. There has also been a great growth in dock and other accommodation.

With the tendency to use larger vessels and more complex machinery came the tendency to form companies and syndicates. The fisherman ceased to own his boat, and now retains at best a share in it. The increase in size of both the vessel and the gear necessitates increased intricacy in the operations of fishing and increased specialization on the part of the hands. The old fishing community, whose fathers and grandfathers have been fishers, is disappearing before the advance of modern economic forces. The fishing-village is turning into the cheap seaside resort.

The scene of operations of the North Sea fisherman is by no means limited to the area in the map over which the two words wander. Roughly, for purposes of definition, we may say that a North Sea fisherman is one who lands his fish at an eastern port. Should he do so at a southern or western port, even though he hail from Lowestoft or Scarborough, he temporarily ceases, for our purpose, to be a North Sea fisherman. The North Sea codmen work along the Orkneys, the Shetland and Faröe Islands, Rockall and Iceland. The fishing-grounds of East Coast trawlers now range from Iceland and the White Sea to the coasts of Portugal and Morocco. Boats have gradually made their way along the Continental coasts on the eastern side of the North Sea, opening up, about the year 1868, the grounds to the north of the Horn reef off the Danish coast. In this direction, as in the Icelandic grounds, the pioneers have been the codmen and the ‘liners,’ who catch their fish on hooks attached to long lines--sometimes seven miles in length and carrying 7,000 hooks--which are lowered to near the bottom and attached to buoys. The ‘liners’ also first exploited the more central portions of the North Sea, fishing the great Fisher Bank for many years before the appearance there, about thirty years ago, of the trawlers, who have only used it as a winter-ground since about 1885. It was not until about 1891 that trawlers visited the Icelandic grounds.

In spite of the increase in the area of the fishing-ground which took place in the last century, the intensity of the fishing has more than kept up with the new areas exploited. Professor Huxley’s Commission held the view that not only were there as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, but that the fish were as many and as large as before, and that there was no reason to suppose their number would diminish. Indeed, when we consider that an unfertilized fish-egg is rarely found in the sea, and that, according to Dr. Fulton, of the Fishery Board for Scotland, the female turbot produces annually 8,600,000 eggs, the cod 4,500,000, the haddock 450,000, the plaice 300,000, the flounder 1,400,000, the sole 570,000, whilst the herring has to be content with the comparatively meagre total of 31,000, optimism seems permissible. On the other hand, the reflection that, if the stock of cod remains about constant, only two out of the 8,600,000 ova attain maturity, gives some idea of the destructive forces at work.

The eggs are expelled into water, whilst a male is ‘standing by,’ fertilized in the water, and (except in the case of the herring, whose eggs sink) those of the chief food-fishes float to the surface, where they pass the first stages of their development. Except, again in the case of the herring, which has definitely localized spawning-grounds, there has hitherto been little trustworthy evidence as to the existence either of stereotyped spawning migrations or of very definite breeding-grounds in the case of the chief food-fishes. The great Lofoten cod-fishery in spring is based on such a migration, as it is at this time of the year that the cod approach the coast in dense shoals for spawning purposes. During the summer, after the spawning is over, the cod disappear northwards. But with respect to the spawning habits of fishes in the waters most frequented by British fishermen we know little more than that the greater number of fish spawn in relatively deep water and at some distance from land. Light will doubtless be thrown upon this problem by the international investigations now in progress. The brilliant discovery by the Danish investigators of immense numbers of the fry of the common eel in the deep water of the Atlantic, west of Ireland, and the absence of the eggs and fry from the North Sea and Baltic, render it practically certain that the countless hordes of eels which leave the rivers of North Western Europe in autumn migrate to the ocean for spawning purposes; and, more remarkable still, that the delicate young elvers which enter the same streams in autumn have already overcome the perils of their long return migration.

Before considering the evidence for the existence of a progressive impoverishment of the fishing-grounds, it should be recorded that the Trawling Commission of 1885 held that the increase of trawling had led to a scarcity of fish in the inshore waters; and that to get good catches it was necessary to go farther to sea. Eight years later, the Select Committee of 1893 held that ‘a considerable diminution [had] occurred among the more valuable classes of flat-fish, especially among soles and plaice’; and that of 1900 reported that ‘the subject of the diminution of the fish-supply is a very pressing one, and that the situation is going from bad to worse.’

The evidence which induced this change of view rests partly on experiment, partly on statistics. Although the new view may be correct, none of the older sources of evidence are altogether satisfactory. One charge which used to be made against the trawl--that it destroyed the fish-spawn--has been disproved. The ova of all the prime food-fish, as we have seen, with the exception of those of the herring, float on the surface; and the herring is a fish that shows no sign of diminishing in number. In 1886 the Scottish Fishery Board began experiments to determine whether the number and size of fish were diminishing on a certain limited area or not. The Firth of Forth and St. Andrews Bay were closed against commercial trawling, and divided into stations. Once a month the ship employed by the Board visited each station and trawled over a given area. The fish taken were counted and measured. For the first few years the results indicated an increase of food-fish; but, taking a longer period and considering the flat-fishes alone, we find that the numbers of plaice and lemon-sole taken sank from 29,869 for the five years 1885-1890, to 28,044 for the five years 1891-1895. On the other hand, the dab, a comparatively worthless fish, had increased from 19,825 to 29,483.

These figures, it is true, have not been generally accepted as an exact measure of the changes which took place during the period investigated; but independent criticism has corroborated their general tendency. It looks as if protection had been encouraging the wrong sort--a process not unknown elsewhere. The explanation possibly lies in the facts adduced by Dr. Fulton that the plaice and lemon-soles spawn only in the deep water outside the closed areas, where they are subject to continuous fishing, with the apparent result of a decrease in the number of eggs and fry inshore; whilst the dabs spawn to a large extent in the protected waters, and many of them in the offshore waters are able, in consequence of their small size, to escape through the meshes of the commercial trawl, even when mature.

Two further experiments, carried out in 1890 and 1901 by the Scottish Fishery Board and the Marine Biological Association respectively, showed for the first time that the annual harvest of a given area bears a much larger proportion to the stock of fish than had been previously supposed. These were experiments with marked fish, designed originally to trace their migrations. Out of more than 1,200 plaice liberated in the Firth of Forth and St. Andrews Bay, more than 10 per cent. were recovered almost exclusively by hook and line. Owing to these waters being closed against trawlers, there is reason to believe that the number actually recaptured by trawl and line together was very much greater. Again, out of more than 400 marked plaice liberated on the Torbay fishing-grounds, 27 per cent. of those liberated in the bay, and 35 per cent. of those set free on the offshore grounds, were recaptured by trawlers.

The evidence derived from statistics has hitherto been, in many respects, unsatisfactory. In spite of the recommendations of more than one Royal Commission, nothing was done towards a systematic collection of fishery statistics until the late Duke of Edinburgh, at a conference held at the Fisheries Exhibition of 1883, happened to read a paper on some statistics collected by coastguards as to the quantity and quality of fish landed. This paper being sent to the Board of Trade, ‘it was decided to establish a collection of fishery statistics for England and Wales on the same lines, and generally by the same machinery, as has been recommended by His Royal Highness.’ Unfortunately, neither the lines nor the machinery have proved sound. The officials have also been hampered by want of funds. The Treasury offered £500 (afterwards increased to £700) a year for statistical purposes--a totally inadequate sum when distributed as wages among the 157 ‘collectors’ scattered round our coasts. The duties of these collectors were to send monthly returns of thirteen different kinds of ‘wet fish’ and three kinds of shellfish, stating the quantities landed and the market value at the port. They had no powers to demand information from anyone, or to examine books or catches or market-and railway-returns; and they were subject to but little if any supervision.

Not only were these statistics untrustworthy, even as a simple record of the quantities of fish landed, but they were rendered practically useless for exact inquiries concerning the decline of the fisheries, through the neglect of any precautions to discriminate between the catches in the home waters and those on distant fishing-grounds of a totally different character. Fish from Iceland, Faröe, and the Bay of Biscay, as these areas were successively exploited, all went to swell the totals in the single column of ‘fish landed,’ thus rendering it quite impossible to determine the state of the fishery on the older fishing-grounds around our coasts. Taking the statistics as they stand, however, we find that during 1886-1888 the average quantity of fish annually landed on the coasts of England and Wales amounted to 6,263,000 cwt., valued at £3,805,000; during 1890-1892, 6,184,000 cwt., valued at £4,496,000; during 1900-1902, 9,242,000 cwt., valued at £6,543,000.

The average price of fish per cwt. in these periods was consequently 12s. 2d. in 1886-1888, 14s. 6½d. in 1890-1892, and 14s. 3½d. in 1900-1902. The census returns indicate that the population of England and Wales had risen in the meantime from about 28,000,000 in 1887 to 29,000,000 in 1891, and 32½ millions in 1901. We thus see that the people were steadily increasing their expenditure on fish, viz., from 2s. 9d. per head in 1887 to 3s. 1d. in 1891, and to 4s. per head in 1901. The quantity consumed amounted to 25 lb. per head in 1887, 23·9 lb. in 1891, and 38·8 lb. in 1901.

To appreciate the significance of these figures it is necessary to bear in mind that, prior to 1891, the fishing was mostly prosecuted in the North Sea and in the immediate neighbourhood of our coasts. During this period the price rose 20 per cent. and the supply fell--facts which indicate with tolerable certainty that the yield of the older fishing-grounds had reached its limits, if it was not actually declining. But in the following decade the conditions were reversed; the supply increased 50 per cent., and the price fell 3d. per cwt. This was the period of rapid increase in the number of steam-trawlers, of the exploitation of new fishing-grounds in distant waters, and of a great expansion of the herring-fishery.

There was thus no question of a general scarcity of fish. Fishing-boats were multiplying, and supplies increasing by leaps and bounds. Between 1891 and 1901 the average annual catch of plaice rose from 677,000 cwt. to 959,000 cwt., that of cod from 367,000 to 748,000 cwt., and that of herrings from 1,400,000 to 2,800,000 cwt. In the absence of specific information as to the yield of the older fishing-grounds, Parliament and the Government turned a deaf ear to the fishermen’s complaints.

But in 1900 it was shown to the Parliamentary Committee on the Sea Fisheries Bill of that year that, during the past decade, characterized (as we have seen) by a general fall in the price of fish, the price of plaice had risen 17 per cent., and that of other valuable flat-fishes from 3 to 6 per cent. It was also shown that, while the catching power had multiplied three-fold in ten years, the catch of trawled fish had only increased 30 per cent. In 1901 the inspectors of fisheries provided a table contrasting for ten years the annual supply of trawled fish at Grimsby, Hull, and Boston (which receive the products of the Icelandic fisheries), with that of other East Coast ports which derive their fish exclusively from the North Sea. In the former ports the supply had increased from year to year, while at the other ports the supply during the years 1895-1900 was in no year so great as in the least productive of the years 1890-1895. The fishermen’s case was at last made out; and in 1902 the late Government decided to participate in the investigations recommended by the Christiania Conference in 1901 for the purpose of formulating international measures for the improvement of the North Sea fisheries.

It is satisfactory to turn from the past records of neglect, from the supineness of the authorities, the imperfections of the statistics, the inadequate pittance devoted to investigations, to the progress which has taken place since the Government decided to devote a reasonable proportion of public funds to the improvement of knowledge on fishery subjects. The collection of official statistics has been reorganized on all our coasts on a system which aims at obtaining complete accounts of the results of each voyage of every first-class fishing-boat; the catches of trawlers and liners are now distinguished; the quantities of fish caught in the North Sea are distinguished from those taken beyond that area; the quantities of large, medium, and small fish are separately recorded in important cases; the numbers, tonnage, and landings of different classes of fishing-vessels are separately enumerated.

It is interesting to note the first results of the more exact system introduced in 1903. Considering only the fish caught in the North Sea and landed on the East Coast, we note a marked decline in the total catch of steam-trawlers during the years 1904, 1905, and 1906, and an increase in the catch of sailing trawlers. The former declined from 4¾ million cwt. in 1903 to 3¾ million cwt. in 1905; the latter increased from 277,000 cwt. in 1903 to 296,000 cwt. in 1905. It is shown, however, that these changes were accompanied by a considerable fall in the amount of fishing by steam-trawlers and a rise in the case of the sailing trawlers, so that inferences concerning impoverishment or the reverse would be premature. Nevertheless a fall in the abundance of haddock may be inferred from the fact that not only the total catch of this species, but also the average catch of the boats fell off continuously from 8·4 cwt. per diem in 1903 to 6·1 cwt. per diem in 1905. The fall is also seen to be mainly due to a scarcity of ‘small’ haddocks in 1904 and 1905 as compared with 1903. With the conclusions to which such data as these are likely to lead we are not now concerned; but these examples are sufficient to show that the official statistics are no longer a confused mass of useless figures, but a rational and fairly accurate system capable of analysis.

We have now to examine those experimental branches of investigation which are equally necessary for the effective solution of fishery problems. The chief possible causes of an impoverishment of the sea are three in number. First, as in the central United States the accumulated richness of a virgin soil produced at first huge crops, so, when fishing began in the North Sea an accumulated wealth, both in the number and in the greater size of the individual fish, was drawn upon. This ‘accumulated stock’ has been fished out.

Secondly, a given area of the sea, like a given area of land can support but a limited quantity of produce. There is a definite amount of food for fish in a definite volume of sea; a limit is therefore set to the number of fish in that volume of water. Professor Hensen and Professor Brandt, of Kiel, have shown that a square metre of the Baltic produces an average of 150 grammes of dry organic material in the shape of diatoms, copepods, and other floating organisms. A similar area of land produces 180 grammes of ultimate food-substance. The productivity of the sea is judged on this basis to be about 20 per cent. less than that of the land. The actual amount is of less importance than the consequences it entails. If the methods of fishing are more destructive of one species than another, comparatively worthless species may become dominant in areas where they were formerly scarce, and thus consume the food which should be reserved for their betters. It is commonly reported that the dab has tended to usurp the position formerly taken by the plaice, not only in the Scottish firths, but on the Dogger Bank, in the Devonshire bays, and in other localities. Dr. Garstang, of the Marine Biological Association, tells us that small plaice transplanted to the Dogger Bank in 1904 grew three times as much in weight as did their fellows on the coastal banks; but in the following year they grew only twice as much, owing to the presence of vast quantities of small haddocks, which ate the plaice’s food and were nevertheless too small and worthless themselves to be landed by the fishermen. Yet formerly the Dogger teemed with large plaice and haddock. It was stated to the Royal Commission in 1863 that the fishermen avoided the Bank as causing gluts of fish and depreciation of price; and witnesses from Yarmouth and Hull assured the Commission that between two and three tons of fish, chiefly haddock and plaice, were frequently taken by smacks in a three hours’ haul. As small plaice are confined to the coastal banks, and large plaice are now scarce, it follows that the great food-reserves on the Dogger Bank, which seem providentially designed for the fattening of plaice, are wasted on worthless dabs and baby haddocks. Thus may one cause of impoverishment lead on to another. Perhaps the right remedy in a case like this is to promote the wholesale transplantation of young plaice, as in the case of oysters, mussels, etc. The experiments already made by the Marine Biological Association point strongly in this direction.

Thirdly, the excessive destruction of young fish is another, and perhaps the greatest, cause of the impoverishment of the sea. The destruction is enormous. In the winter of 1882-1883 it was estimated that in the Firth of Forth, the Firth of Tay, and the Moray Firth, 143,000,000 of young herrings and a much greater quantity of sprats were captured. These were mostly sold as manure. Yet the herring does not decrease; it is the flat-fish, the plaice and the sole, that suffer most. In 1896, 368 tons of small fish were seized by the Fishmongers Company at Billingsgate; in 1897, 143 tons; and in 1898, 96 tons. These were sold as manure or destroyed. Mr. Holt estimates that, while over 7,000,000 mature plaice were landed in the port of Grimsby during the year April, 1893, to March, 1894, over 9,000,000 plaice not sexually mature were brought to port; or, taking the trade distinction between ‘small’ and ‘large’ fish, over 6,500,000 plaice under 13 inches in length were landed, as against 9,700,000 over 13 inches. So many as 10,407 young plaice have been taken from a single drag of a shrimp trawl. These are but a few instances out of many, showing the great destruction which is going on among the young of our more valuable food-fishes.

The questions they suggest are still a matter of discussion. Whether even this destruction has an appreciable effect on the adult population is debatable. It does not seem to have affected the herring; and we must not forget the prodigious number of offspring given to fish. The taking of immature fish is not in itself uneconomic, unless by that means we so far reduce the total number that the adult stock begins to dwindle. Sardines are more valuable than their adult form, the pilchard; whitebait, mainly composed of young sprats, with from 1 to 20 per cent. of young herrings, fetch more in the market than the parent form; and so long as the adults exist in sufficient number to keep up the stock of fry, sardine and whitebait fishing is perfectly legitimate.

But, assuming impoverishment from one or other or all of the causes enumerated, we should ask what steps can be taken to check it, especially as regards the more valuable flat-fish. It is at this stage that scientific knowledge becomes particularly important. At least nine out of every ten Acts of restrictive legislation have been shown by experience to be futile, or to have produced results absolutely different from those anticipated. It is equally plain that the failure of these attempts to interfere with the natural course of events has been largely due to inadequate knowledge of the complicated factors which affect the growth, multiplication, and distribution of fish, and of the influence which particular modes of fishing exert upon the sources of supply.