NORTH SEA INVESTIGATIONS. 121 



It is important, however, to note that the beamless trawl, with its 

 enormous spread, has been already used on these grounds, and it may- 

 be expected that next spring it will sweep up the small plaice in 

 more wholesale fashion than the beam trawl has done in previous 

 years. 



The other vessels concerning which I made en(|uiries, had been 

 fishing in the neighbourhood of the Dogger, from which one vessel, after 

 a voyage of eight days, landed 31 kits of rather small plaice, 12 kits of 

 large plaice, and 180 kits of haddock. 



I did not see at Hull any small vessels employed in fishing in the 

 Humber, or in territorial English waters. 



4. Lowestoft. 



I arrived in Lowestoft on September 5th, and the next day saw a 

 heap of small soles in a fishmonger's shop. I bought a sample of these 

 and found it consisted of 4 immature females 7iin. to 8f in., and 3 

 immature males 7 in. to 8| in. No less than 4 of these 7 soles were 

 under 8 in. in length, and I found afterwards that soles similar to this 

 sample were frequently on sale at the same shop. It naturally 

 occurred to me that this observed fact was strikingly inconsistent with 

 the statement made to the Parliamentary Committee of 1893, that soles 

 under 8 in. in length were never brought into the Lowestoft market in 

 sufficient quantities to make a sale of them. On referring to the 

 Eeport of the evidence taken by that Committee, however, it appeared 

 that the statement in question was made in reference to the trawl 

 market, and was intended to refer to the trawlers. I found that the 

 soles which I examined were caught in the inshore waters by the 

 shrimpers, two of whom gave evidence before the Parliamentary 

 Committee. One of them stated that they threw the undersized soles 

 overboard alive, the smallest kept being between 7 and 8 in. My own 

 observation shows that the limit is as low as 7 in. 



On September 17th, I had a conversation with the master of one 

 of the shrimping boats in Lowestoft Harbour. He had just come 

 in from his morning's work. The boat was open, and rigged with 

 two masts, carrying two lug sails. There was only one trawl on board, 

 an ordinary beam-trawl of 15 feet beam, the net of shrimp-mesh 

 at the cod end. The man informed me that there were about forty 

 such boats at Lowestoft, and they were to be seen moored in the 

 outer harbour, though I could not count them. They were not all at 

 work at this season, many of the men being employed in the herring 

 and mackerel boats. The principal shrimping season is from May to 



August. 



K 2 



