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Part III. — Twentieth Annual Report 



but in the deep watei^ the larger round fishes as hng, hake, cfec, are 

 always more numerous, and haddocks more steadily abundant. The 

 difi"erence among the flatfish is more marked and permanent. Plaice, 

 for example, were scarce sixteen miles ofi:' Fair Isle, and almost quite 

 absent sixty miles from Sumburgh Head, while in Aberdeen Bay and 

 Dornoch Firth they abound. Witches and megrims, on the other hand, 

 are by far the most abundant flat fishes in the deep water. By looking 

 over the Tables appended to this Report it will be seen that the 

 difierences in the proportion of the species that exist on a particular 

 ground, and the presence of some or the absence of others, depend 

 rather upon the depth of the water than the distance from the coast. 

 In the deeper parts of the Moray Firth and in the depression off 

 Aberdeen (the so-called " Dog Hole ") the catches approximate to those 

 obtained ofl" the Shetlands ; but such deep-water areas near the coast 

 are very limited in extent. 



I have been able to obtain the statistics showing the total quantities 

 (in cwts.) of the fish landed fi'om each of the trips referred to above, 

 and they are as follow : — 



II. — The Comparative Efficiency of the Otter-Trawl and 



Beam-Trawl. 



the 



Until a few years ago the net universally used by trawlers was the 

 beam-trawj, an apparatus which remained essentially the same from 

 the time trawling was introduced, except that it gradually increased 

 in dimensions. In 1894 the otter- trawl, which was much favoured by 

 yachtsmen,* was modified by Mr. Scott of Granton to adapt it for 

 deep-sea fishing, one of the principal changes being the re-arrangement 

 of the net so that the head-line, to which the upper part of the net 

 was attached, was made much shorter than the ground-rope, whereas 

 in the ordinary otter-trawl they were of the same length, and the net 

 was towed by two sepai-ate warps. The new method was so much more 

 successful than the beam-trawl that it rapidly replaced the latter, and 

 this change appears to have been accomplished sooner in England than 



* Holdsworth, Deep-Sea Fishing and Fishing Boats, p. 372. 



