5 -THE SEA AND COAST FISHERIES. 



BY DANIEL T. CHURCH. 



Personally I am a commercial fisherman and have been connected with the fisheries 

 from my youth to the present time. It is my belief that fish that live and spawn in 

 tide water are inexhaustible and that no mode of capture yet invented in the form of 

 seines and traps is able to make any appreciable difference in the supply. Floods 

 and droughts of all tide- water fish are the rule and the fluctuations would be just as 

 marked if man never took a fish from the water. 



Thirty years ago it was claimed in England, as it is in the United States to-day, 

 that improved methods of taking fish with nets, seines, and other contrivances were 

 diminishing the supply of fish, and the Queen appointed James Caird, Thomas Henry 

 Huxley, and George Shaw Lefevre to inquire into the condition of the sea fisheries of 

 the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Their conclusion, after three 

 years' exhaustive inquiry, was expressed as follows: . 



We find the laws relating to sea fisheries to be complicated, confused, and unsatisfactory; many 

 restrictions, even of late date, are never enforced; many would be extremely injurious to the interests 

 of the fishermen and of the community if they were enforced, and, with respect to these and others, the 

 highest legal authorities are unable to decide where and in what precise sense they are operative. 



We advise that all acts of Parliament which profess to regulate or restrict the modes of fishing 

 pursued in the open sea be repealed, and that unrestricted freedom of fishing be permitted hereafter. 



For the present we advise that all acts of Parliament which profess to regulate or restrict the modes 

 of fishing pursued inshore be repealed, with the exceptions, purely on grounds of police, of the local 

 act regulating pilchard fishing at St. Ives, and, for that part of Loch Fyne which lies above Otter 

 Spit, of the act prohibiting trawling for herring in Scotland. 



It may be instructive to consider the action of the Dutch government, the sea fisheries having been 

 for three centuries a matter of care and prominent interest in Holland. Their present position is 

 referred to in the following words of the King's speech at the opening of the legislative session of 

 1865-66: " The produce of the fisheries, both in sea and river, is most satisfactory." 



Referring to the Dutch fisheries the English commissioners state: 



Up to 1857 the Dutch fisheries were burdened with many restrictions intended for their pro- 

 tection and encouragement. The period within which herrings could be fished was limited. The 

 places of fishing, the times, the nets, and the tackle were all under regulations. But the fishery lan- 

 guished and declined, and it was determined by the legislature to try the effect of another system. 

 A law was passed in 1857 abolishing all restrictious, regulations, and enactments as to close time, 

 trawls, nets, and lines. Every one was left free to fish the sea in any mode and at any time he deemed 

 most advantageous, while a fishery commission was established to collect the statistics of the various 

 fisheries and report annually to the legislature upon all matters affecting the interests of the fisheries. 



The result has been a steady and continuous improvement. The last report of the commission 

 shows greater anxiety to find new markets in foreign countries for the fish than about the prospects 

 of an abundant catch. The commissioners conceive that the future prosperity of the Dutch fisheries 

 will depend on a profitable outlet for the fish being found by a freer intercourse wifh neighboring 

 countries. A return is given of the number of vessels employed in the herring fishery at Scheveningen 

 and their annual catch, which rises from 24,969,000 in 1858 to 33,535,000 in 1864. The export of cured 

 herring from all parts of the country had risen from 30,919,271 "stuks" in 1858 to 42,698,000 in 1864. 



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