Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/668

662 question, as disclosed in the Commissioners' Report, in a lighter and less formal style than such a serious publication allows, adding from time to time such information or comment as may seem necessary.

The complaints of the fishermen against the trawlers, fall, as the Commissioners point out, into two classes: first, those of decrease of fish; secondly, those of damage to gear.

As regards the second of these points, we have already touched upon the state of things out of which it arises, showing how the natural rivalry of the fishermen and trawlers is aggravated by the conditions of their respective industries. This exasperation is unfortunately kept alive by the peculiar difficulties that lie in the way of recovering damage for injuries of this description, should the trawler deny his liability.

In the first place, there is the difficulty of identification. As the Commission says: –

"When nets or lines are injured, the mischief usually takes place during the night or about daybreak, and often at a considerable distance from the boat to which the damaged gear belongs. There may be several trawlers at work in the neighbourhood, and the fishermen cannot say by what vessel the damage was done. ... Sometimes the trawler is plainly visible, but is so distant, or steering in such a direction that her number and letters, which are only painted on her bow, are not distinguishable by the crew of the fishing-boat."

The fisherman are unable to follow her to take her number, because of the further loss they might incur if they deserted their gear in its broken condition. There is also the impossibility, under certain circumstances, of overtaking a steamer. But even if the offender be identified, the fishermen have a great dislike to going to law, owing to "a combination of difficulties, such as probably exist in the case of no other litigation," which have to a great extent prevented their obtaining adequate redress either in civil suits for damages or prosecutions under the Sea Fisheries Acts. To enter further into this question would protract our paper to an undue length. It is, too, a matter of more interest to the fishermen and trawlers themselves than to the general public, and depends to a great extent upon Acts of Parliament, rendered more than usually obscure by their having to be read together with International Fishery Conventions.

The question of the fish-supply, on the other hand, not only affects the whole population of the United Kingdom, but is also of considerable attraction to the general reader, being concerned not merely with the fate of a particular branch of the fisheries, but with the natural laws that govern the habits of all fish. It will, however, be easily understood, that in proportion as this part of the Commissioners' inquiry embraces a wider and more varied field than the other, so is the difficulty of arriving at the truth concerning it increased. Unfortunately we are extremely ignorant of all that relates to the food-fishes of the sea. Such knowledge is not easy to come at, and hitherto there have been no practical reasons for investigation in that direction. We have always had as much fish as we wanted, taking one season with another, and the supply has seemed practically inexhaustible. In the case of some fishes that ascend our rivers it has been different; their numbers have been rapidly diminished by over-fishing; we have been compelled to investigate their lives, and regulate their capture by the knowledge thus obtained. But of