Living Silver 



whole complex apparatus was euphemistically styled - the moor- 

 ings. 



Very little sign of the moorings was left once the Scotsmen got 

 to work. They used a floating dahn instead of an anchored one 

 and they wrapped a few lengths of rope round the bufFs ; but they 

 had no chains or coirs or mooring buoys or anchors. This fly- 

 ^^^§§^^g ^yP^ ^' §^^^ ^^^ evolved for two good reasons. The first 

 was that it was much less cumbersome and expensive ; the second 

 that it was more easily shifted from one ground to another and 

 could therefore follow the swimming roundfish better than the 

 heavy anchor gear. Once a Danish fisherman had shot that appara- 

 tus he was tied to the one spot for the rest of the day. If there 

 were no fish to be found then he might indeed raise it and take his 

 boat to cinother ground but the time lost in hauling and re-shoot- 

 ing would waste most of his working hours. He was therefore 

 unlikely to try his hand when he was uncertain about the potenti- 

 alities of the area his set would cover. This was all right for such 

 a sedentary animal as the plaice, but haddock and whiting were 

 constantly in motion and no fisherman could be certain of taking 

 a good haul of them anywhere, though some places were more 

 likely than others. Those who searched for roundfish, that is, had 

 to be prepared for disappointment. They had to keep themselves 

 mobile, be ready to investigate several grounds in one day and, 

 finding no fish at any of them, move on to yet another where, ulti- 

 mately, they would catch what they were after. And, though 

 Scottish seiners did land large numbers of plaice and even a few 

 lemon sole, they depended on roundfish for their bread and butter. 

 In this they differed fundamentally from the type of their profes- 

 sion — the seine was essentially a plaice net and it had surprised 

 everyone when it was first shown to be capable of catching round- 

 fish at all. Yet it did catch them and, because seine trips were of 

 shorter duration than trawler ones, it landed its shots in better 

 condition; and seine men were therefore able to fetch better 

 prices for roundfish. In the complicated economics of the indus- 

 try, however, this tendency towards higher prices was largely 



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