16 Fishery Board for Scotland. 



The following are among the many important points brought out, 

 or illustrated, by these two Tables. 



1. The total quantities of fish landed by the Aberdeen trawling 

 fleet have diminished as follows during the four years in question : — 



That is to say, the quantities landed had dropped in 1915 to one- 

 third, and in 191G to about a quarter, of those landed in 1913. 



2. From one important region, namely, the West Coast of Scot- 

 land, the supply was entirely cut off, after the end of 1914, owing to 

 Admiralty regulations. This region had furnished in 1913 over 

 150,000 cwts., and in 1914 about 90,000. Aberdeen trawlers also 

 ceased to visit the Irish grounds, the Norwegian coast, and (what 

 was a much more important matter) the Fisher Bank and the 

 neighbourhood of the Danish coast. From these latter areas, and 

 from the " South-west grounds " in general, 45,000 cwts. of trawled 

 fish had been brought to Aberdeen in 1913. 



3. The North Sea yielded throughout the period about 57 per 

 cent., on an average of the total supply ; somewhat less in 1914, and 

 somewhat more in 1915. The actual quantities landed from the 

 North Sea, and their percentage proportions to the whole, and their 

 percentage proportions to the North Sea catch of 1913, were as 

 follows : — 



Total, 2,970,000 57-0 



The percentage reductions, then, compared with the catch of 1913, 

 are not very dilferent for the North Sea from those of the fishing as 

 a whole. But when we come in the next place to the East Coast 

 Grounds, and take them by tbemselves, apart from the rest of the 

 North Sea, we find a very different state of matters. 



4. Of the areas on our chart which are included, for statistical 

 purposes, under the name of the East Coast Grounds, one, viz.. 

 Area XVIL, was closed to trawling at an early period of the war, in 

 the same way and for the same reasons as the West Coast generally. 

 Part of the same area and the greater part of Area XXII. are 

 included in the Moray Firth, from which trawlers are excluded by 

 statute. There remain, then, only the two Areas XXIII. and XXIX., 

 and the small coastal Area XXVIIL, which lie off our East Coast 

 from Peterhead to Dunbar. 



We have more than once called attention, in former years, to the 

 remarkable way in which these East Coast areas have retained their 



