444, EXAMINATION OF THE PRESENT STATE 
Conclusions. 
A very few words will suffice to summarise the conclusions to 
which my previous remarks will have pointed. They are to the 
effect that the only practicable method of checking the depletion of 
the North Sea grounds and of enabling the fish supply to re- 
cover is by legislation based on the principle of the size limit. 
Further, that the size limits proposed by the Parliamentary 
Committee are absolutely useless, and indeed ridiculous. No series 
of limits can be of appreciable use unless that assigned to the plaice 
is at least 18 inches. No lower limit will suffice to keep the 
trawlers off the Hastern grounds, where they will continue to 
destroy as much as ever, even if, in virtue of some smaller size 
limit, they land and sell less than at present. I would repeat that 
these grounds can be absolutely closed to our trawlers, and to all 
trawlers whose catches are ultimately sold in this country, by a size 
limit of 13 inches for plaice, even if only enforced during the Spring 
and Summer. It is not absolutely necessary to apply a size limit 
to any other species, though a size limit of 12 inches (or even 10 
inches) could not fail to be beneficial to the sole, as tending to 
bring about the return to the sea of many small specimens which 
are caught in shrimp trawls and by inshore fish trawlers. The size 
limit of 8 inches for soles is altogether contemptible. It does not 
materially alter the present North Sea market customs in regard to 
the sale of this fish, and it has been aptly said of an eight-inch 
sole that, when you have taken off two inches for the head, and two 
inches for the tail, you are left with four inches of skin and bone in 
the middle ! 
It has been said that any legislation having for its effect the 
closure of the Eastern grounds would deprive our fishermen of their 
only chance of catching soles in the summer. Even if this were 
true, the sole is of such little real importance in comparison with 
the plaice, that I do not think the matter would be of much moment ; 
but, in any case, it may be supposed that the relief of this spawning 
ground from our large fleet of trawlers would probably result in the 
reappearance of the species on other grounds which it has now 
practically deserted ; and any increase in the species, even if con- 
fined in the summer to the Hastern side, could not fail to make itself 
felt in the winter in the Silver Pits. 
Returning to the plaice question, it is urged that the foreign 
vessels would continue to catch them -as before; but this is not the 
case, as the chief market for these fish is in our own country, and 
therefore our restrictions of sale would react on foreign vessels as 
