66 SALT-WATER FISHES 



chief among which is its inability to catch any but surface 

 fishes — herring, pilchard, or mackerel. On the other hand, it 

 can be used in any depth of water, an advantage over any of 

 the other nets previously described. It is a moving, not a 

 fixed, net, and in fact it combines in itself the principles of the 

 scan and trammel aforementioned, more particularly the simpler 

 form of " gill-net." There are many such compromises 

 between two different forms of net, particularly in other seas 

 than ours. The gangui, used in the Mediterranean capelan 

 fishery, is a combination of sean and trawl, and the Norwegians 

 have a sort of sack-net, a square sean worked by four boats on 

 the rise-and-sink principle, like the smelt-nets at Cowes, or 

 the bilancia used in Italian lagoons and estuaries. There is, 

 however, no space to describe foreign fishing apparatus in the 

 present volume, which, moreover, deals only with the fish 

 and fisheries of our coasts. 



It has been said above that the drift-net is the most 

 scientific of all those used in the capture of our sea fish, and 

 the reason for this statement was the fact of its successful use 

 depending on a knowledge of the habits of pilchards and such 

 fish towards sunset. Then it is that, perhaps dreading their 

 many voracious enemies less in the gathering darkness, the 

 pilchard shoals spread out a little in the great waters, yet 

 keeping their heads all one way, so that they may readily 

 reassemble at dawn, and feed greedily on the minute copepoda 

 and other organisms that supply their nourishment. They 

 all head away from the land, so the nets meant to strangle 

 them are spread in rows parallel to the shore. Such a net, for 

 pilchards, would measure 40 fathoms in length and 4 in depth, 

 and has 40 meshes to the yard ; and each boat uses a " fleet," 

 as it is called, of sixteen nets. The " fleet " of mackerel nets, 

 on the other hand, used aboard the largest-sized drifters, 

 numbers no fewer than eighty, but each net is much smaller, 

 having a length of only 20 fathoms in length and 16 ft. in 

 depth, and having, of course, a larger mesh, 28 to the yard. 



