CHAPTER XXI 



BUSINESS MEN ON HAKE PEOBLEMS 



Mr. C. G. Morleij on Hake Fisheries 



The minutes of Mr. Tennant's Committee on Fishery Investi- 

 gations (Cd. 4304, 1908) contain some interesting evidence 

 on the development of the hake fishery. Mr. Morley, Manag- 

 ing Director of the Southern Steam TrawHng Company of 

 Waterford, explained that Milford vessels in the late * eighties ' 

 used to find great quantities of hake in the summer ' off the 

 Smalls. Then we apparently killed the hake that came in 

 there,^ and we thought that that hake came in from some- 

 where, so we gradually extended our fishing to try and meet 

 the hake coming in '. They met it. ' First at the Longships, 

 off down Land's End way; then in the Bay of Biscay; then 

 (in December and January) off Cape Finisterre ; and finally 

 down in Morocco.' 



' Now we meet it practically all the year round on the edge 

 of the deep water, about 270 miles west by south from 

 St. Anne's Head. We have nothing to guide us as to where that 

 hake breeds, or where it comes from. I think (though this is 

 a matter for scientific investigation) that one of the main 

 causes of the herring fishery on the south coast of Ireland 

 being not so good as it was, is that we are killing the hake as 

 it comes in, and drives the herring into the coast ; we know 

 from opening out the guts of hake that there is nothing they 

 are so fond of as herring spawn, and that is one reason we 

 think the herring fishery on the coast of Ireland has failed.' 



He explained how the new 130-foot hake-trawlers carried 

 two miles of warps on their big winches. He noted that the 

 Morocco hake (off Cape Blanco) was oily and soft, and did not 

 sell nearly as well as the deep-water hake caught out to the 

 westward in 200 fathoms. Summer hake, he said, was always 

 softer than winter hake. He had seen no signs of depletion. 

 He had seen a great deal of small hake landed from Morocco, 

 but ' apparently when we get below Cape Blanco we do not 

 get the English fish at all '. 



Mr. Morley had chartered a big ship and himself gone down 

 to find out what the Portuguese knew about hake. He had 

 spent a day with the King of Portugal and one of his professors 



' This theory is interesting, but surely presupposes a very much greater 

 deetruction of hake than actually takes place. 



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