24 THE OKGANIZATION OF 



Again Britons need not lament that so much of the work is 

 handed over to Norsemen, Danes, Swedes, and Frenchmen. 

 There are not nearly enough trained men in Britain to do the 

 work, and, as ocean research means the exploration of the high 

 seas which are free to all, it must be based on international 

 co-operation. There is no room on the high seas for parochial- 

 ism. The Scandinavians and Danes are not only naturalists 

 but seamen, who speak and understand the language of British 

 seamen better than most Englishmen. They had, moreover, 

 grasped the truth that fishery was an ' ocean ' problem while 

 this country still thought in terms of the territorial waters, and 

 bays, and beaches, and county boundaries. All that is true. 

 But each of the fishing ' squadrons ' must be in touch with the 

 men — whatever their nationality — who are working out their 

 problems for them ; and this means continuous and lucid 

 explanation of the work, not in blue books which appear (some- 

 times) once a year, but in some form in which it will really reach 

 owners and men as the w^ork proceeds. ' Iceland men ', and 

 ' hake men ', even men who fish the north of the North Sea — all 

 the ' deep-sea ' people, in fact — are wont sometimes 1 o complain 

 that Science has no interest in fish other than herrings and 

 plaice. Nothing could be farther from the fact, though the 

 comparative bulk of English plaice literature and the literature 

 of other species is reflected in these pages. But the deep-sea 

 squadrons who never fish the North Sea shallows cannot at 

 this stage be expected to take much personal interest in the 

 South-Eastern plaice problem, and few, if any, of them know 

 of the work which Hjort, and Schmidt, and Dahl, and others 

 have done on cod, and haddock, and saithe, and hake. They 

 ought to have been told. In 1908 Mr. F. Barrett, ^ on behalf 

 of the Grimsby trawler owners, asked that they should be told. 

 And they should never again be left in ignorance. 



Finally, a word- or two to the industry. The wonderful 

 thing — as it will realize when Science finds time to explain — ■ 

 is not that so httle but that so much has been accomplished. 

 Save in Norway, where a distinguished ocean investigator - 

 has been Premier, politicians have not hitherto very enthusiasti- 

 cally encouraged this science, on which, in Hjort 's words, the 

 ' hfe of the industry ' depends. 



In the ' sixties ' men were still wondering whether fish-eggs 

 floated. In a few short years men have by patient, dogged 

 perseverance learnt, amongst many other things, to recognize 

 nearly all the commercial species at every stage of their growth 

 from less than one-tenth of an inch upwards. That alone in- 



» Cd. 4304 (11>08), p. 408. - Dr. Nanscn. 



