OF THE GRIMSBY TRAWL FISHERY. 433 
on the Eastern grounds, while if they have to shovel over a few 
more plaice than they do at present, the difference will do them no 
harm,—and the fishery no good. Before one can sell a fish, it is 
necessary to catch it, and as our deep-sea boats do not catch turbot 
and brill of less than 10 inches, such part of the recommendation 
as refers to these species might as well have been omitted. 
In fact the Committee’s recommendations leave the deep-sea trawl- 
fishery of the North Sea, the deterioration of which was the primary cause 
of the inquiry, absolutely untouched ; they cut off some little from the 
catches of inshore fishermen—enough to annoy them, but not enough 
to do any material good to the supply of the species concerned. 
In face of the evidence offered, it is rather difficult to understand 
by what mental process the above result was arrived at, until we 
take into consideration the conflicting interests of different parts of 
the coast. It is quite evident, from the experience of my colleague 
Mr. Cunningham, that there is very little destruction of immature 
flatfish by the deep-sea trawl-fishery of the south-west coast, and 
consequently no need of legislation by size limit as far as that 
industry is concerned. It appears, however, that such legislation 
would have a beneficial action on certain inshore fisheries of that 
district, but we are met by the fact that the plaice of the south- 
west coast are altogether smaller than those of the North Sea. It 
follows, therefore, that any limit of size, high enough to be beneficial 
in the North Sea, would be too high for the south-west coast, since 
it would render unsaleable a large number of actually mature fish, 
and seriously and unduly interfere with the operations of offshore 
trawlers. This, I think, is a sufficient argument against the 
universal imposition of a high limit of size, the more so as I can 
see no reason why the limit should be universal. 
The practical application of different size hmits to different 
districts has been held to be extremely difficult, but the difficulty has 
certainly been overrated. Fish must be landed somewhere, and 
from my own experience of the Grimsby market, I am convinced 
that a fishery officer could without difficulty exercise a sufficient 
control over the size of fish landed. The Parliamentary Committee, 
though they mention that the prohibition of landing as well as of 
sale was suggested to them, do not make any recommendation on 
this head; but to most people it will appear to be only a matter of 
common sense that, if sale is prohibited, it should be made equally 
unlawful to land the undersized fish. It has been suggested that 
if we prohibit the sale of fish under a certain size in one district, 
and permit it in another, fishermen will evade the law by running 
their catches to some port where the smaller size limit is in opera- 
tion. Doubtless this might be the case if we were dealing with fish 
NEW SERIES.—VOL. III, NO. V (EXTRA NUMBER) 34 
