THE TRAWLING COMMISSION AND OUR FISH-SUPPLY.
Trawling, though a familiar word, has not hitherto been one of much meaning to the general public. Few persons are aware that some of the choicest forms of sea-fish, such as soles, turbot, and brill, are taken almost entirely by this method of fishing. Fewer still have any idea that 3000 deep-sea trawlers work off the coasts of Great Britain, employing a capital of £15,000,000, and catching annually about £3,000,000 worth of fish; or that the proportion of trawled fish to that taken in other ways in the London market, is about 5 or 6 to 1.
Trawling, or "trailing, "has been practised on our southern coasts for about a century, but not to any great extent, except at Brixham, which may be said to have been built from the proceeds of that industry. It is, however, only within the last twenty or twenty-five years that trawling has been generally adopted; but it is now largely used not only off the coasts of the United Kingdom, but also in French, Dutch, and Belgian waters.
Such a rapid development has not been effected without a struggle. On the contrary, in certain places trawling has met with so much opposition, that even in this epoch of "burning questions," it is, along a considerable part of the coast of Great Britain, the most burning. In Aberdeen, for instance, the trawlers have been the object of a demonstration as effective, and probably far more hearty than that against the House of Lords itself. At Wick and Stornoway recent piratical outrages are expected to bring the complaint of the anti-trawlers within "the range of practical politics;" while at St Andrews the fishermen have lately adopted the irrefutable argument of burning in effigy a Professor, whose opinions they supposed were unfavourable to their interests.
The section of the British coast to which allusion has just been made, and to which the remarks in this paper must be understood to be limited, lies between the Moray Firth and Flamborough Head. In this district the word "trawler" is associated with an extent of industrial, moral, and even social iniquity, that would much astonish a south-countryman. This feeling, which proceeds, in the first instance, from the line and drift-net fishermen (whom we shall call, for shortness' sake, the fishermen), has, to a certain extent, infected all public opinion, and is by no means of recent origin. What is recent is the degree of fierceness to which it has reached. The reason of this outburst, and indeed the nature of the whole feud, cannot properly be understood without a short explanation of the modus operandi of these three methods of fishing, by whose friction so large a flame has been kindled.
"Trawling," or more strictly speaking, "beam-trawling," is fishing by means of the beam trawl-net. Let the reader imagine a large beam, from 20 to 50 feet long, resting on two iron shoes or runners, shaped like a D, with the curved side to the front, and standing from 3 to 4 feet high. If he can achieve this mental picture, we will next inform him that these runners are called the "head-irons," and present a flat surface to the ground of about 4 inches
