INTERNATIONAL REGULATIONS OF FISHERIES ON THE HIGH SEAS. 81 
Besides these steamers there are in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland 
a multitude of motor boats for fishing along the shore. 
The police or superintendence and protection of fisheries by cruisers has 
been more or less successful, and it would be well to reconsider carefully the 
duties and the administration of the power invested in the commanders and 
officers of the cruisers, as well as the magistrates who have to mete out pen- 
alties for infractions of the law. This also is a matter for an international 
fisheries society to deliberate on. ‘‘ Regulations for Maintaining Good Order 
Among the Fisheries at Sea,’’ April 6, 1889, has had only a limited effect, as it 
is practically embodied in the sea fisheries acts of 1882, but, on the other hand, 
the North Sea fisheries act, 1893, respecting the liquor traffic in the North Sea, 
has been a great blessing and a boon both to the owners of fishing vessels and 
to the fishermen themselves. It has practically annihilated the ‘‘cooper,”’ with 
spirituous liquors and tobacco, and the tobacco has been transferred to the 
mission ships belonging to the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, 
from which tobacco can be bought for 1 shilling per pound, equally as cheap as 
from the ‘‘ cooper.”’ 
The one unfortunate result which has arisen in contravention to the interna- 
tional convention of 1882 came froma desire to close the Moray Firth against 
all steam trawling, the plea being that this piece of water was the spawning 
ground for flatfish. In reality there was another feeling emanating from the 
fishermen who carried on long-line fishing in the Firth of Forth, and those fisher- 
men made representations to the Fishery Board for Scotland to stop this trawling 
in the Firth. This board accordingly passed a by-law prohibiting trawling. 
Power was sought and obtained from the British Government and it became a 
statute. The English trawlers were seized in the Firth, skippers arrested, fish 
confiscated, and trawling gear removed from the vessels. The owners were 
heavily fined, but the foreign trawlers insisted upon their rights to fish when out- 
side the 3-mile limit and inside the imaginary line drawn from point to point, a 
distance of over 70 miles, instead of the 1o-mile bay. When it became known 
that the foreign trawlers could carry on their operations under the protection of 
the international agreement or convention, the English began to register their 
ships under foreign flags. There are to-day 35 steam trawlers sailing under the 
Norwegian flag out of Grimsby, practically owned by Englishmen and worked 
by them for the sole purpose of trawling in the Moray Firth. This action has 
caused much enmity between the Scotch fishermen, as well as the Fishery Board 
for Scotland, and the English trawlers under the Norwegian flag. Of course, 
English trawlers should observe the fishing rights of the long-line fishermen and 
also those of the drifters as well as the preserved ground or waters for scientific 
purposes; but, on the other hand, the Fishery Board for Scotland had no legal 
right to encroach upon the North Sea outside of the teritorial limits, which is 
under the common jurisdiction of the high contracting parties and this tribunal 
B. B. F. r908—6 
