BUSINESS MEN ON HAKE PKOBLEMS 117 



(unnamed). They were ' of opinion that the hake breeds on 

 what they call the Continental plateau, which is somewhere 

 down between Morocco and Madeira, and gradually works its 

 way up the coast to the edge of the deep water, to get into the 

 feeding on the shoal ground '. He had tried the Mediter- 

 ranean ^ between Gibraltar and Algiers for hake, and found 

 only a few small ones, and ' a few baby hake up as far as 

 Barcelona on the Spanish coast '. Morocco, he said, was the 

 main hake ground for the big ships, but ' now we are getting 

 hake about 270 miles west by south from St. Anne's Head ; 

 that is, on the edge of the deep water'. In the cold weather 

 his ships always had to go into deep water for fish. His skippers 

 found that in rainy weather it was easier to catch fish off 

 Waterford Harbour. Was this because the water became 

 turbid ? Or does the diminution in salinity attract the 

 spawners ? 



He explained that the deep-water fishery was first started 

 about 1903. It was carried out about 270 miles W^S of Land's 

 End, and also 100 miles W^S of the Fastnet. He explained 

 that they caught herrings — the prey of the hake — in trawls at 

 60 fathoms, hut only in very hot loeather ; and that the hake 

 came up (especially at night) to take the herring. 



He reiterated his opinion that the hake really affected the 

 migration of herring. They found hake, he said, ' when the 

 herring is off Ireland, and we find the hake full of her ring 

 spawn ; you can always tell the fish that has fed on herrings ; 

 he is so fat and oily '. 



He suggested that the hako might breed at about 1,000 

 fathoms. They got a fair quantity of ' baby hake', i.e. hake 

 about 10 inches long ; but they never got any very small 

 ones — and none, for instance, as small as 6 inches. These 

 baby hake were caught at the edge of the bank (along with 

 the big ones) off to the southward of Ireland — that is to say, 

 in the neighbourhood of the ' Smalls '. 



As to migrations, Mr. Morley said that they ' lost ' the hake 

 often in July, and that it appeared up at the Moray Firth in 

 August. Nobody caught hake in the Enghsh Channel from 

 the Smalls up to the Moray Firth, ' and nobody knows how it 

 goes up to the Moray Firth ; as far as we know, the theory 

 is that it swims off the ground, and we cannot get it '. 



^ M. Paul Gourret noted in 1894 that big hake were rarely caught off Provence, 

 and that the species was decreasing {Les Pecheries et'les Poissons de la Mediter- 

 ranee {Provence), Paris, Bailliere et Fils, 1894, p. 355). But the writer would 

 like to see the African coast of the Mediterranean tried for hake, for it is 

 along this coast that the current sets in from the Atlantic and flows to the 

 eastward. 



