83 



designed on sound lines readily capable of adjustment and 

 development to meet new requirements or to operate on a 

 greater scale ; the latter are limited to their present trivial 

 development owing to the restraint imposed by use of dug-out 

 canoes as the sole form of fishing craft employed. An improved 

 type of boat must be adopted in Malabar waters before progress 

 can be resumed, but those methods which Bombay fishermen 

 find successful should bo within the capacity of Malabar men to 

 emulate now that the demand for fish, both cured and fresh, is 

 expanding rapidly in consequence of increase of population, 

 improvement in the economic condition of the masses, and, 

 more particularly, improved and accelerated means of steam 

 transport and distribution. With improved methods of curing 

 the demand for cured fish especially is capable of enormous 

 increase, and the employment of drift-net boats of an improved 

 Ratnagiri type is the best way to obtain the requisite supplies ; 

 in doing so such boats would tap what is to all intents and 

 purposes a new source of supply, because south of Mount Dilli, 

 the offshore waters, say from 7 fathoms outwards, are untroubled 

 by the fisherman. In addition, drift netting for sharks would 

 confer great benefit on other fisheries ; these fish swarm off 

 the Malabar coast and as many are predatory > following and 

 feeding upon shoals of smaller fishes, the havoc they cause is 

 enormous. Even when they do not gorge upon fishes, they 

 compete with them for their food-supplies, for the shoals of 

 small crustaceans in the waters, and for the worms, burrowing 

 prawns, and other creatures of the bottom preyed upon by the 

 bony fishes. Every boat load of sharks brought in must be 

 considered not simply as so much weight of food and fish oil, 

 but as the removal of so many destructive enemies and active 

 competitors of the more valuable food fishes. 



40. The concession recently made by Government in res- 

 ponse to the representations of Sir F. A. Nicholson, of allowing 

 issue of cheap salt to boats engaged in deep-sea fishing removes 

 a great obstacle to the successful conduct of deep-sea drift 

 netting on an enlarged and extensive scale, and will remove the 

 great objection made in the past to the employment of Ratna- 

 giri methods in the shark fishery by certain curers who state 

 that the catches brought ashore by the Ratnagi boats are fre- 

 quently (usually) more or less putrid and infested with maggots, 

 faults due entirely to faulty curing entailed by the employment 

 of salt in insufficient quantities. 



41. Before concluding this section upon the prospects of 

 drift netting on the Malabar coast, it will be useful to state 

 exactly what Katnagiri methods at present are. To explain 

 this, I cannot do better than detail some personal observations 



