THE INTERNATIONAL FISHERY 

 INVESTIGATIONS 



By JAMES JOHNSTONE 

 University of Liverpool 



When, in July 1899, the Swedish Government invited the 

 governments of the countries interested in the fisheries of the 

 North Sea to join in a scheme for the joint investigation of 

 that area, there appeared to be little hope of arranging concerted 

 action of this kind. International regulation of the North Sea 

 fishing area was, of course, a very familiar thing. Ever since 

 1842, when the Governments of Great Britain and France 

 arranged a convention for the settlement of fishery disputes, 

 some kind of international regulation had always been in force. 

 But the necessity for this had always been apparent ; disputes 

 between fishermen of different nationalities working together 

 on the high seas were then, as now, by no means infrequent, 

 and the settlement of these by ordinary legal methods was 

 always a difficult and protracted affair. So, although the 

 arrangement of fishery legislation on an international basis was 

 a somewhat laborious process, the absence of such was more 

 inconvenient still. International conventions have therefore 

 been arranged at different periods for the treatment of ordinary 

 disputes between the fishermen of England and France, and 

 later on of those of most of the other countries fishing in the 

 North Sea, and these have, on the whole, worked very satis- 

 factorily. It was, however, a very different affair to arrange 

 for joint action in matters of international fishery research by 

 scientific methods. 



That this should be so is a rather surprising thing when 

 one reflects that there must be many fishery restrictions which, 

 if they are to be of any real use, must be based on an intimate 

 knowledge of those facts of natural history which have reference 

 to the life histories of the fishes and other marine animals 



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