OUR FISHERIES 79 



have gone before. The international difficulty, for instance, is 

 as important as it is in the proposed extension of the three- 

 mile limit. Clearly, it would be almost futile to forbid our 

 fishermen to bring undersized plaice to Dover if they knew 

 that there was a ready market for them at Calais. If 

 Grimsby is to be shut to immature fish, while the buyers of 

 Scheveningen or Bergen receive them with open arms, little 

 good is served beyond the slight extra labour given to our men 

 in disposing of the forbidden wares. Almost as important, how- 

 ever, as this objection on the score of international complications 

 is the great difficulty of fixing satisfactory size-limits. The bulk 

 of our fish, as already stated, are marketable long before they 

 are sexually mature, and by marketable is meant in this instance 

 not only lawfully saleable, but even sought after by buyers. A 

 few kinds, however, are sexually mature while yet too small to 

 be of much use as food. A third difficulty arises in the wide 

 variation of size in sexually mature fish in different parts of 

 our seas. A mature plaice at Plymouth is not, for example, 

 the same size as one that spawns for the first time in the 

 neighbourhood of Grimsby. As matters stand at present, we 

 protect neither " undersized " nor " immature " fiat-fish. It 

 might at first sight appear that if a fish has been allowed 

 to spawn at any rate once, it might fairly be caught and 

 consumed. On the other hand, as has already been suggested, 

 some fish are capable of spawning while still small, and it seems 

 wasteful not to wait for these to grow heavier before capturing 

 them for the market, particularly as in most cases the larger fish 

 fetch proportionately far more per pound. 



One obvious advantage in prohibiting the sale or landing 

 of fish below certain fixed measurements — the length of any 

 fish is a far more accurate criterion than its weight — would be 

 the immunity from trawling operations of certain shallow bays 

 and inshore areas, even of certain high sandbanks far from 

 land, where the water is comparatively shallow, and which 

 are known to shelter only small fish. If the trawling masters 



