38 



Fishery Board for Scotland. 



TABLE X. 



Average Catch of Extra Small Haddock, in Cwts., per 100 Hours' 

 Fishing, by Aberdeen Trawlers {see also Chart, Fig. 5, following p.|^41). 

 Area XXIII. 



connection. It vv^ould be easy to suggest, for instance, that these 

 exceptional landings of very small haddocks were due to the increas- 

 ing scarcity and rising price of other fish, and to go on then to assert 

 that these small haddock, now utilised and become valuable, had 

 been wastefully and even wantonly thrown overboard in former 

 times until a lesson in elementary economy was forced upon us ; and, 

 finally, we might be tempted to suspect that the great and rapid 

 diminution of the catches of these small fish in 1916 was a result, at 

 last, of over-fishing, or was at least somehow directly due to the 

 operations of man. 



But the case looks very different when we look at it from other 

 sides. For we then find, for instance, (1) that the great rise in the 

 catches of extra small haddock took place so precisely at the time of 

 the commencement of the war that there was as yet no appreciable 

 disturbance in the fishing ; and it took place with great suddenness, 

 whereas the diminution of fishing operations and the rise in price of 

 the commodity took place slowly and gradually. Moreover (2), 

 when the prices of fish reached their greatest inflatation in 1916, the 

 catch of these small haddocks was already on the wane. And again 

 (3), when we look back over our older statistics, (our statistics of 



