390 DEEP-SEA FISHING. 



quals or fin-whales, a large species frequently entering 

 deep bays and estuaries iii pursuit of shoals of fish ; 

 they are dangerous and difficult to kill, as they at 

 once make for open water when attacked, and they 

 are not worth very much when by any chance they 

 are captured. We have seen them quite at the head 

 of Bantry Bay. 



Herrings have been abundant in Donegal Bay in 

 particular years ; they come at the same time as the 

 sjjrats, and drift-fishing and seaning are sometimes 

 carried on together in the same immediate locality 

 without causing the ill-feeling which has been so 

 strongly shown under similar circumstances in Lochfyne. 

 There is also a small winter herring fishery in the begin- 

 ning of the year ; and, as on the Scotch coast, the fish 

 taken at the two seasons appear to belong to different 

 broods, the one spawning early in September and the 

 other in February. The visits of the herring to the 

 different parts of Donegal Bay are very capricious, but 

 a more regular fishery might probably be obtained if 

 the fishermen were more generally able to use drift-nets, 

 and could work in the open part of the bay. At present 

 they look out for the herrings near the shore in order 

 to catch them with the sean, and there are many places 

 where they have only an occasional opportunity of 

 using that kind of net. If the herrings find their way 

 with tolerable regularity so far up as Inver and the 

 head of the bay, although varying in numbers from year 

 to year, it does not seem unreasonable to expect that 

 they might be caught by systematic drift-net fishing in 

 the thirty miles of open water through which they must 

 pass on their way in from the sea ; but to carry this out 

 properly would require better boats and more nets than 

 the fishermen have the means of providing. Mackerel 



