2l8 



license is permissible ; probably these vast bodies of fish 

 are as inexhaustible as the herring shoals of the British 

 and other coasts, and it is evidentially certain that vast 

 shoals frequently pass untouched, because unperceived, 

 a few miles out at sea ; it is even true that fishermen 

 sometimes deliberately neglect to make possible catches 

 because present appliances and methods do not admit of 

 dealing with them, a strong argument for the rapid 

 development of curing enterprise. But with regard to 

 deep-sea fishing, i.e., beyond the 6 mile limit, there need 

 be no restriction and there should be development, the 

 obvious method being the use of larger boats using 

 more powerful nets and lines, able to keep the sea 

 comfortably for a week together so as to avoid the vast 

 loss of time in daily voyages, and carrying salt, under 

 the existing Madras rules for the carriage of duty-free 

 salt, for curing their fish on board, as on the coasts of 

 the United States, Holland, etc: 



Now private enterprise necessarily feels diffident in 

 deep-sea developments ; the fisherfolk are poor and 

 ignorant, and there is no class corresponding to the fishery 

 capitalists who finance and organize the vast fishing 

 industries of Great Britain ; it is not certain that deep- 

 sea fishing will pay ; it is not clear whether the fish are 

 there in such abundance and frequency and accessibility 

 that large boats would pay their expenses, nor is there 

 any one who will risk the cost of building large boats on 

 a speculative enterprise. Hence it has been left for 

 Government to attempt the enterprise, and two boats 

 are now being built — one a motor boat— to test this 

 question. Though large as compared with existing craft, 

 they are really small, viz., 14 and 22 tons, but they will 

 suffice to settle the question and are big enough for all 

 present ordinary purposes in these waters. Moreover, 

 the use by the Cannanore Experimental Station of two 

 Ratnagiri (Bombay) boats, of about 8 tons each, in these 

 Malabar waters, shows that they can catch, somewhat 

 further out to sea than the canoes, large fish (seer, etc.) 

 in quantities and of a character quite impossible to canoes ; 

 using large and long drift nets they bring in very paying- 

 loads of valuable fish. Later in the season these boats 

 go still further to sea, remaining out for a week, and 

 catch shark, etc., in abundance, salting their catches on 

 board ; hitherto they have used duty-paid salt which. 



