208 RECENT REPORTS OF FISHERY AUTHORITIES. 



the number of plaice and other flat fishes has not increased: it has 

 fluctuated from year to year, but never maintained a steady increase. 

 The number per haul of the trawl has also not increased in the open 

 area. * It seems reasonable to infer that the reduction of the number 

 of spawners on the open grounds, by the great extension of the trawling 

 industry, is so great that protection of the young fish is not sufficient to 

 compensate for it. With food-fishes, as with oysters, we are apt to 

 attach so much importance to the number of ova produced by each 

 female, that we overlook the importance of the number of females. It 

 is of course true that if we could save a larger proportion of the progeny 

 of a few parents, we should obtain a large number of fish or oysters. 

 But, on the other hand, it may be, and experience indicates that it 

 would be, more practicable to obtain our object by preserving a 

 larger number of parents. In the case of oysters more success has 

 been secured, as Mr. Bashford Dean has pointed out, by maintaining 

 a very large reserve of parents, than by trying to preserve a larger pro- 

 portion of the progeny. One method of doing this with sea-fishes 

 would be to create reserved and protected spawning grounds. But there 

 are objections to this method : there is the difficulty of protection, and 

 also the fact that the fish will wander away, and be caught on other 

 grounds. Now it is possible to regard the hatchery, as at present 

 worked, as simply a reserve of spawners. No matter how many 

 spawners may be taken from the sea, those in the hatchery are safe, and 

 will supply their annual quantum of eggs or fry. But to carry out this 

 principle effectively it would be necessary to keep in confinement, 

 not hundreds but thousands or millions of spawners. We should have 

 to maintain a number bearing some significant proportion to the number 

 which now survive to spawn in the sea. It is conceivable that if 

 spawning fish were maintained in confinement all along the coast 

 in sufficient numbers, we might depend for our fish supply almost 

 entirely on the eggs and fry derived from those. It may be that 

 this will be the ultimate solution of the problem of replenishing 

 our exhausted fishing grounds. In the meantime, although it seems 

 wonderful to read of hundreds of millions of fry placed in the sea, 

 as a matter of fact we are dealing, as I have shown, with only a 

 few hundred spawners, while thousands upon thousands are being 

 annually captured. 



* The following are the average numbers of fish taken per shot of the trawl, in two 



