6 



EXTRACT FROM A SCHEME FOR THE DEVELOPMENT 

 OF FISHERIES, IQTH JANUARY 1905. 



* * * 



9, Though at least 75 per cent, of the Madras people will eat fish 

 if they can get it and though such food is most nutrient and, when 

 fresh or properly prepared most wholesome, >et, as a fact, the internal 

 fish supply of the country is of the scantiest and most insufficient 

 character, while its quality, often semi-putrid, causes it to be often 

 unwholesome and possibly the cause of more than one disease. Again 

 while the fields are infertile or less fertile than they should be for 

 want of manure, one great source of such manure, viz., the sea fish- 

 eries, is left almost unworked. Now to remedy the above defects we 

 need, in India, to work in two opposite directions ; inland we require 

 to protect fish, to hinder reckless destruction, to add largely to the 

 productiveness of existing waters, and to develop modes of stocking 

 waters at present unused ; for marine fisheries we need to develop in 

 every way the modes of entrapping the immense but almost unused 

 wealth of the sea and of placing the increased catches in good condi- 

 tion upon the inland markets. If reports are true, and they are 

 confirmed by casual observation, the inland sources of fresh-water fish, 

 scanty in most places as a food-supply, are in process of exhaustion 

 and destruction by combined recklessness and ignorance, while, on 

 the other hand, the illimitable resources of the sea are exploited in 

 the most primitive of fashions ; as has been rightly said, the apparatus 

 and methods of the fisherfolk bear just the relation to Western 

 methods and, it may be added, to the existing, and still more to the 

 future, needs of this country that the catamaran bears to the steam 

 trawler. Inland or on the backwaters, save perhaps on the Nilgiris, 

 there is not only no attempt at pisciculture or even at conservation, 

 but the only principle adopted throughout is to catch and destroy 

 everything that swims from the fry weighing 20 to the ounce upwards ; 

 wilful destruction by poison and explosives is said to be common, 

 while in the dry weather the river-pools and the tanks are netted clear 

 of every sort of fish that can be got into the nets. As for methods of 

 checking such blind destruction, such carelessness of the future, they 

 are not even in contemplation, while developments now common to 

 civilized countries such as the artificial propagation of fish in 

 hatcheries and the restocking therewith of inland waters, are absolute- 

 ly unknown. As for the marine fisheries the fishermen are ignorant 

 and poor, they scarcely venture to pass 24 hours at sea, since their 

 boats are generally small and primitive and they have no means of 

 preserving their catches ; the drying and salting of the fish is crude 

 and the product unsatisfactory. It is true that the fish-curing yards 

 under the Salt Department are doing good and increasing work, but 

 these hardly tend to increase the quantity of fish caught or to develop 

 the ability and methods of the fishermen in catching the fish and 

 bringing them alive to the curing yards, nor are new methods taught 

 of curing the catches such as are found necessary even in temperate 



