= 6> 
yey 
shrimps put aside, and we believe that they really wish to 
preserve the life of as many of the immature fish caught 
(which are not marketable, and are of no use to them) as 
possible. And we have seen that the contents of the net 
ean be very rapidly sorted out. But in a large catch the 
process is somewhat tedious, and as the deck space in a 
shrimping boat is very limited, part of the catch may be 
put into fish ‘baskets wnsorted, while the remainder is 
being dealt with. In these circumstances the immature 
fish in the reserved portion have little chance of life. 
It is clear that with long drags, with large catches, and 
in warm weather the mortality among the immature fish 
taken in the trawl is much greater. Considering all 
things, there is not much doubt that of the immature fish 
taken in the course of shrimp trawling, as at present 
carried on, a large proportion must necessarily be 
destroyed. 
We have made an attempt to determine the distribu- 
tion from year to year of the four fishes considered above. 
The average hauls for each fish for the third quarters of 
each of the years 1895-9 have been calculated, and these 
are the values compared. ‘The third quarters (July, 
August, September) are selected since those are the 
periods during which the greater number of hauls were 
made, and because they contain the maximum catches for 
all the years and fishes considered. The values dealt 
with, therefore, are those representing most probably the 
condition of the fishery in each year. The results are 
tabulated in Table VI., and they are represented graphi- 
cally in the corresponding set of curves (VI.) on Plate C. 
During this period the average catches of plaice have 
decreased from the maximum catch (2,045) in 1893 to the 
minimum (176) in 1899. The decrease from 1893 to 
1894 was very great. From 1895 to 1897 the catches were 
