110 THE CATCH OF HAKE 



Dr. Herubel, ' in 1891 the increasingly large takes of hake in the 

 Bay of Biscay gave the direct lie to the accusation '. 



From the detailed figures which follow it will be seen that 

 a good year in 1909 on the main grounds to the southward of 

 Ireland, on the ' South Hake Ground ', the ' Cockburn Bank ', 

 and on the westward portion of the ' Great Sole Bank ', for 

 instance, was followed by two very indifferent years. But in 

 1912 the average daily catch per trawler was even heavier than 

 in 1909. Meanwhile, a little farther to the north and west on 

 the Porcupine Bank, and the grounds round about the 100- 

 fathom line off Clare and Mayo and Galway,i the gross catch 

 was steadily increasing, and the daily average in 1913 was 

 higher than in any of the previous four years. Farther north 

 again, along the 100-fathom line northward from the line west 

 of Erris Head (in Mayo) and all along the regions dubbed 

 ' Westward of Scotland ', the gross catch showed no falling off, 

 while the daily catch per trawler steadily improved. 



If the whole of these waters be taken as forming part of one 

 huge fishing-ground — an assumption quite legitimate in the 

 case of an ocean rover like the hake — we get the following 

 figures of gross catch : ^ 



Tons Tons. 



1906 .... 15.300 1910 .... 32,600 



1907 .... 35,400 1911 . . . . 26,200 



1908 .... 35,600 1912 .... 29,900 



1909 .... 40,900 1913 .... 26,400 



Did this mean that there were fewer hake in the Atlantic — 

 or that skippers could not find them ? 



It is possible, of course, to argue that the hake were being 

 fished out ; or that they were shifting their rendezvous farther 

 north, because they found trawling made things uncomfortable. 

 This, to the writer's mind, is to fall into the common error of 

 endowing fish with a reasoning power which they probably do 

 not possess. It would be quite legitimate, surely, to inquire 

 whether the true explanation were not just this — that some 

 impulse as yet undiscovered, but not in any way connected 

 with the operations of mankind, had caused the shoals to shift, 

 and that the trawler skippers, although equipped by their owners 

 with the materiel to exploit the new spawning grounds, had not, 

 as yet, been equipped by naturalists with sufficient knowledge 

 to enable them to find the fish. 



Figures, the writer has been warned, ' overload ' a book and 

 spoil it. So much loose thinking and loose talk about fisheries, 



» The Bay of Gal way is marked on old maps ' The Bay of Hakes '. 



* It must not be forgotten that this fishery practically dates from 1903 only. 



