Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/672

666 ous instance of the vitality of tradition in the face of experience, that the fishermen examined by the Commissioners maintained to a man that all spawn did sink to the bottom. Far from this being the case, recent investigations in Norway, America, and Scotland, have established as an undoubted fact, that ripe and uninjured ova of cod, haddock, and flat-fish, and many others, either float on the surface of the water or a little below it. The only important exception to this rule is the spawn of the herring. It is, therefore, herring-spawn only that could suffer by the action of the trawl, and in the takes of this fish, the Commissioners find that there has been no diminution.

If evidence of reputation were to be trusted, the trawlers would come off badly on the charge of destroying immature fish. The bad name that they have incurred in this respect is perhaps due to the work of the small trawlers alluded to in the beginning of this paper, who on many parts of the coast work close inshore, and probably do destroy a large amount of fry. Although, throughout the evidence taken by the Commission, it is clearly the belief of the fishermen that this evil prevails to a very large extent, they do not seem to have produced any really conclusive proofs of its existence. In the experiments of Professor M'Intosh, the immature fish registered as caught in the trawl were mostly of the less valuable kinds. The quantity of young haddock and whiting taken was inconsiderable, the immature specimens of these fishes being generally found in the mouths of the larger kinds – a state of things that makes the trawlers their avengers rather than their murderers. It seems likely, that below a certain size the fry escape altogether through the meshes of the trawl-net, as Professor M 'Intosh states that it was rare to capture dabs under 5½ inches in length, and that in using the small trawl close inshore in St Andrews Bay, none of the smaller flat-fishes with which that region abounds were taken. This absence of immature fish in large quantities from the trawl-net was fully borne out by the trawlers themselves; and it seems clear that, at any rate in the districts visited by the Commission, there is no wasteful or unnecessary destruction of food-fishes committed in this way.

The next charge we come to is that of "injury to the food of fish and the bait-beds." It is easy to understand that constant trawling on a limited area, such as a mussel-bed, may injure and disturb the inhabitants, and deprive the fishermen of their supply of bait. Indeed this possibility has been recognised by the Legislature, who have given power to the Board of Trade to suspend trawling in such places. But the alleged damage done by the trawl to the bottom of the sea, and to "the invertebrate bottom fauna" inhabiting the banks where the fish feed, seems to be of a somewhat visionary character. All that appear to suffer are the more brittle forms of submarine life, such as star-fish, sea-urchins, &c. Other forms of these creatures of a more pliable nature would probably receive little injury from the ground-rope, while the surface of the head-irons is too small to do material damage. In all probability this view of the injurious effects of the trawl-net was originally founded upon the idea that, strange to say, still exists in the minds of some of the fishermen (cf. Ans. 6334), that the heavy trawl-beam itself is dragged along the bottom of the sea.