THE GREAT FISHERIES 



19 



Iceland in very dirty weather and filled her with fish till her 

 decks were awash. Incidentally he sank a U-boat, and (also 

 incidentally) was badly holed and himself hit with shrapnel. 

 He landed his fish, and won the D.S.C. 



In the same way it is not as a rule sound business to transfer 

 a ship from one squadron to another. North Sea work is quite 

 a different proposition, financially as wtII as in other ways, 

 from Iceland work or ' Hake ' work. Under present conditions, 

 a small trawler on the southern sole and plaice grounds, for 

 instance, will just clear her expenses if she lands £11,000 worth 

 of fish a year ; but a deep-sea vessel will be in debt if she 

 * grosses ' less than £22,000. A ship is, in fact, the best machine 

 for the work for which her class was designed. To put her on 

 to other work would be no less injudicious than to order the 

 Aquitania into the Bombay trade. 



All this is laboured to show that each class of fishing is faced 

 with problems which appear to fishermen to be, and are to 

 some extent, distinct. A drifter man, who lands every day, 

 a short voyage trawler who lands once every week or ten days ^ 

 or oftener, and the deep-sea man, all have questions to ask 

 from naturalists, and all have sea lore to impart. Their main 

 trouble is that they do not know how the work of exploring 

 the ocean has been parcelled out, or the results w^hich have 

 already been achieved. 



Productivity oj the Grounds 



The catch landed by the English fleets from the various 

 regions demarcated in the chart in 1913 compared roughly as 

 follows, and the species which prevailed in each region over the 

 five years ending in 1912 are noted in the column of Remarks : 



Tons in 1913. Remarlcs 



Haddock, Cod, Plaice, Soles, Turbot. 



Cod, Haddock. 



Cod, Haddock, Halibut, Plaice. 



Plaice, Haddock, Cod. 



Cod, Haddock, Halibut, Coalfish, 



Cod, Coalfish, Haddock. 



Hake, Bream, Rays. 



Hake, Bream, Haddock. 



Cod, Coalfish, Hake, Ling, Halibut. 



Haddock, Ling, Cod, Halibut 



Hake, Skate, Monks, Soles. 



Hake, Skate, Bream, Soles. 



Skate, Cod, Plaice, Soles. 



Skate, Soles, Whiting. 



For average duration of a trawling voyage on each of the various grounds, 

 below, p. 200. 



B 2 



