CHAPTER I 



INTEODUCTOEY 

 OCEAN EESEAECH AND THE GEEAT FISHEEIES 



Two years ago the writer had very vague ideas indeed about 

 research work as applied to the fisheries. A kind fortune has, 

 since that time, brought him to some extent into contact with 

 marine investigators and also with the fishing brotherhood. 

 He has had nothing but pleasure out of this intercourse, but it 

 taught him^that some naturalists in this country are not fully 

 in touch with the economics of fishing ; and that the industry 

 is, in its turn, not generally acquainted with the men to whose 

 researches it is more deeply indebted than it knows. For his 

 own education he has delved, laboriously and unhandily as an 

 amateur will, into the biology and economics of fishery. The 

 notes which follow were originally compiled as part of a course 

 of self-instruction. With all diffidence they are now published 

 for the expert criticism of Science on the one hand and Business 

 on the other. If they induce Business and Science to talk 

 things over with each other they will have served their purpose. 

 Science is, sometimes, apt to regard the business man as 

 a person ' who does not try to understand us ' : Business may 

 retort that Science ' never finds out anything useful ', and so 

 forth. The real fact is that there are two circles of extremely 

 able and energetic men ; each is intent on the work which lies 

 to its hand ; each, generally speaking, is too preoccupied with 

 that work to spare time to explain its ideas and difiiculties to 

 comparative strangers ; and each uses a technical language of 

 its own. The Great Fisheries are a young Industry ; Ocean 

 Eesearch is a young Science ; and Youth is generally reticent 

 about its enthusiasms until it is assured of sympathy. There 

 are, however, signs that advancing age is producing (as always) 

 a mutual desire for the exchange of ideas with people outside 

 the immediate circle of the initiated. 



In the pages which follow, the writer has attempted to give 

 a picture of the fisheries as they were in 1913 — the last year for 

 which normal statistics are available. 



As he has studied — especially the works of Hjort — it has 

 been borne in upon him more and more vividly that oceanic 



