FISHES AND MANKIND 387 



employs no less than 2,000,000 men, as compared with some 

 80,000 in the British Isles. In 1925 the output in the British 

 Isles was valued at £20,250,000, more than half the total value 

 of those of all other northern European nations put together. 

 France came next, with a total of £7,000,000, followed by 

 Norway with £4,850,000, and Spain with £4,000,000, while 

 outside Europe the total output of the United States was 

 valued at £19,000,000, that of Canada at over £5,000,000, 

 and that of Newfoundland and Labrador at more than 

 £2,000,000. The latest figures for England and Wales alone, 

 that is, for the year 1929, show that the total quantity of wet 

 fish of British taking landed during the year was 14,287,000 

 cwts., valued at £14,444,000, showing an increase of 6 per cent, 

 in quantity and 10 per cent, in value over that of the previous 

 year. The growth of the British sea fisheries during the twenty- 

 five years preceding the war was amazing, the total yield 

 being more than doubled in this period. It was not until 

 1885 that the Board of Trade first made an attempt to collect 

 adequate statistics in a scientific manner of the fish caught by 

 British fishermen and landed at British ports. The total in 1888, 

 the first year for which figures covering the whole of the British 

 Isles are available, was given as 575,000 tons, valued at 

 £5,471,000, but by 19 1 3 it had reached the huge figure of 

 1,233,000 tons, valued at £14,693,000 when landed, and about 

 £50,000,000 when it reached the consumers. On the outbreak 

 of war our fisheries made up nearly one-half of the total for all 

 the countries of north-west Europe, and nearly three-quarters 

 of the North Sea fisheries alone. The enormous pre-war 

 increase was due almost entirely to the replacement of the old 

 sailing-vessels by highly specialised steam trawlers and drifters 

 with large supphes of ice. Instead of being able to venture 

 only a short distance from their home port, these modern 

 vessels can go very much farther afield, and now range over 

 the whole of the continental shelf from Iceland, Bear Island, 

 and the White Sea in the north to Morocco in the south, 

 remaining at sea for as long as two or three weeks .^ During the 

 war itself deep-sea fishing was greatly reduced in the North 

 Sea and other home waters, but to-day the yield has more 

 than surpassed that of 19 14, and at the same time the con- 

 sumption of fish by the population of Great Britain is steadily 

 increasing every year, being at the present time about forty 

 lbs. per head each year. 



Quite apart from their economic value, the sea fisheries in 



