OF THE GRIMSBY TRAWL FISHERY. 387 
B, The Alleged Cause of Deterioration in the North Sea Trade. 
The diminution of the fish supply being admitted, it remains to 
consider what evidence there is as to the means whereby it has been 
brought about, Such deterioration has been admitted unreservedly 
only in the case of the North Sea, and there in the case of flat fishes 
alone. 
From the southern fishing centres even of the North Sea there is 
not an unanimous admission of a decrease in the general supply, but 
the scarcity of large fish is acknowledged. Having little personal 
knowledge of the Yarmouth and Lowestoft fishery, in so far as it 
differs from that of Hull and Grimsby, I must leave my readers to 
form their own conclusions from the evidence offered to the Parlia- 
mentary Committee from those ports. 
The alleged cause of the North Sea decrease is over-fishing,—that 
is to say, over-trawling. specially is it attributed to the opera- 
tions of the large deep-sea trawlers. There exists, it is true, or did 
exist, a subsidiary outcry on the part of longshore line-fishermen, 
crabbers, &c., against the practices of inshore trawlers, whether of 
large or small tonnage; but this grievance was of local importance 
only, and could not be said to affect the industry as a whole to any 
appreciable extent. ‘Therefore, though inshore matters call for a 
share of our attention in due season, we may for the present devote 
ourselves to the deep-sea question. 
The decrease in the returns of this branch of the industry were, 
and are, essentially attributed to the destruction of large quantities 
of small fish, and the bulk of this destruction is generally known to 
occur on grounds lying along the Dutch, German, and Danish coasts. 
A glance at the chart appended to this paper shows that a line 
drawn from the Spurn to Hantsholm, in Jutland, forms a rough 
division between the deeper and the shallower parts of the North 
Sea. Hastward of the longitude of the Great Silver Pit and south 
of that line the water never attains a depth of 30 fathoms. North 
of the line, water of less than 20 fathoms is pretty well confined to a 
narrow fringe along the British coast, the Dogger Bank, and a 
stretch of ground that follows the course of the line from the tail of 
the Dogger to the entrance of the Kattegat. It is also apparent 
that on the eastern side the shallow soundings run very much further 
out than on our own coast. ‘The Continental coast forms a large 
bight, of which the estuaries of the Elbe and Weser are the head ; 
while the limbs consist of the coast of Schleswig-Holstein and 
Denmark to the north, and of Hanover and Holland to the south- 
west: along both these limbs is seen a series of barrier islands, 
separating the open sea from large shallow expanses of which a great 
