Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/664

658 dock-lines have seldom more than three buoys in their whole length, while the great lines show a buoy about every mile. The lines are shot just before daybreak, the haddock-lines being hauled as soon as shot, though the great lines are generally left down till slack water.

Drift-nets are used, in the districts with which we are now dealing, almost entirely in the herring-fishery, though further south they are largely employed for mackerel. These nets are from 1 to 2 miles long, and about 30 feet deep. They are suspended in a straight line, at, or a little below, the surface, by means of floats; and are allowed to drift with the tide, forming a sort of floating fence. The fish, when they meet this obstacle, run their heads into the meshes, and attempting to get through, are caught by the gills and unable to go back. The usual time for drift-net fishing is at night, the fish being taken in the greatest quantities just after sundown or before dawn.

The line and drift-net boats, depending as they do mostly upon small tidal harbours, are, as a class, much smaller than the trawlers. The long-line smacks are the largest; but many of the drift-net and haddock boats are undecked, although of late years there has been an increasing tendency to build boats of a larger class for these industries.

It will not require a prolonged study of the above description to show that a collision between trawling on the one hand, and drift-net and line fishing on the other, is as inevitable as when one gentleman at an Irish fair is dragging a coat, and another is looking for a coat to tread upon.

In the first place, it must be remembered that fishing is not carried on to an equal extent in all the spaces of the sea, but is confined to certain grounds frequented by the fish for the purpose of spawning, of obtaining food, or for other reasons not yet fully understood. We have therefore, at the outset, fishing-boats of these three kinds all plying their trade in certain districts of limited area. It is not, however, the mere community of haunts that produces the collision between fishermen and trawlers. Unfortunately the form and method of trawling is almost, one might say, physically antagonistic to the other two systems of fishing. Drift-nets and lines are of a fragile nature, easily broken and destroyed, and when so treated, are difficult to recover. They are, as we have seen, of great length, and are laid across the stream of the tide, thus forming a series of obstacles, sometimes 2 miles, sometimes 8 miles from end to end, planted about a particular sea area, at right angles to the course of trawlers, who are perpetually working up and down. In addition to this, the lines themselves are only marked by small buoys, often at long intervals from each other, and which are, in rough weather, invisible beyond a short distance. The trawler can pass through any number of lines without damage to himself; indeed he may be often ignorant that he has done so. The boat to which the lines belong, even if her position would always give a clue to the lie of her gear, may be at a long distance from the point where the line is crossed. In the case of nets, the boat is of course nearer to her property; but without experience of that kind of fishing, there is no means of telling the direction in which the nets are laid, unless the floats can be