128 NEW SOUTH WALES 



CHAPTER X. 



The Fishing-grounds of Hew South Wales. 



The following facts with reference to our Fisliing-grounds liave been 

 elicited by the evidence obtained by the Royal Commission of 1880, 

 and were embodied in their report. They comprise all the infonnation 

 we have on the subject. 



The number, variety, and extent of the fishing-grounds with which 

 the entire seaboard of the Colony has been endowed, all lying within a 

 very moderate distance of Port Jackson, afford the strongest encourage- 

 ment to the inhabitants of the whole Colony who may hope to see the 

 markets supplied with fish in a manner and upon a system consonant with 

 the requirements of the community. In this Colony the fish most 

 adapted for food purposes do not y(!t require to be searched for in large 

 smacks or fishing-vessels, victualled and equipped for a cruise of several 

 months ; neither is it necessary for our fishermen to make voyages to 

 fishing-grounds distant hundreds of miles from home. Our best fish are 

 very rarely met with more than 10 miles off the coast, or in deeper water 

 than 35 fathoms. The schnapper, which for economic purposes may be 

 ranked with the cod of the northern hemisphere, appears to be distri- 

 buted with remarkable regularity along the Avhole extent of our sea- 

 board — that is to say, over about 600 miles ; and whatever the for- 

 mation or character of the coast may be, this fish, the most valuable of 

 all our forms, and perhaps tlie most abundant, is never absent ; and 

 being essentially a rock fish in its habits, is not migratory. And the 

 same may be said of its congener — the bream ; and in a lesser degree of 

 the flathead, whiting, black -fish, tailors, tarwhine, garfish, and other 

 varieties which frequent the bays and estuaries of harbours and lakes, 

 rather than the ocean depths. Some of these fish are, no doubt, not to be 

 found throughout the year in their usual haunts, but they may be 

 treated for all practical purposes as regular inhabitants of our fishing 

 grounds. 



The seaboard of this Colony is in a marked degree favourable to the 

 existence of a very large supply of the best food fishes. It is indented 

 by innumerable inlets and arms of the sea ; it possesses many rivers 

 whose embouchures are of large expanse ; some of its bays, harbours, and 

 lakes are of vast extent, and its submarine conditions generally are of a 

 character •eminently adapted both as nursery and feeding-grounds for 

 fish. 



Port Jackson, although not very many years ago holding a very high 

 rank among our fishing-grounds for all kinds of the best net fish, is now 

 scarcely regarded as a source of supply at all. And this is owing not so 

 much to the pollution of its waters by the sewage of a large city, or 

 their constant disturbance by the trafiic of innumerable vessels, as to the 

 ceaseless and often wanton process of netting to which every bay and 

 flat has been subjected for the past fifteen or twenty years. The whole- 

 sale destruction within the harlaour caused by stake nets and seines with 

 meshes almost small enough for a naturalist's hand-net has of course 

 produced its natural eflect on the outside grounds, where the schnapper 



