79 



Eeport on the Trawling Statistics collected i?y the 

 " John Fell " and Sea-Fisheries Bailiffs. 



By James Johnstone. 



These trawling observations have now been continued 

 for ten years, and it may be useful to indicate some con- 

 clusions of importance which may now" be drawn from a 

 detailed study of the whole series. It has already been 

 pointed out that the great area of territorial waters which 

 the Fisheries steamer and the bailiff's cutters have to 

 traverse in the course of their police duties renders it 

 impossible that any restricted fishing ground can be 

 trawled on as often as might be desired. This applies 

 morei particularly to the off-shore fishing grounds, and it 

 is only in the case of two in-shore grounds — the 

 Blackpool Closed Ground and the Mersey Shrimping 

 Grounds — that we possess fairly extensive series of obser- 

 vations. From the study of these it appears that some 

 general conclusions regarding the abundance of fish on 

 those areas during the last decade may now be made. It 

 ought to be pointed out, however, that the observations 

 referred to were not made with this precise object in view, 

 but were intended rather as surveys of the fishing grounds, 

 to supply evidence of the desirability of legislative restric- 

 tion of methods and times of fishing, and from this latter 

 point of view the series of observations made on the 

 Mersey Shrimping Grounds is all that can reasonably be 

 desired. But we will show, later on, that in order to 

 ascertain the changes in the abundance of the different 

 fishes frequenting the area from year to year, a more 

 extensive and a differently planned series of observations 

 than that we possess is necessary. 



