84 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
in most cases—without sufficient information; and then, having made regulations, we 
have had to set to work to a very much larger extent to find out whether they are jus- 
tified by the facts before us. But in recent years we have been somewhat altering our 
methods, and there is now established, as regards the principal powers of western Europe 
who are interested in the fisheries of the North Sea, the German Ocean, an international 
council for the study of the sea. That council started with a very large programme 
of research, involving many matters, which those who are interested in fisheries know 
are concerned with fishery development, and which influence the movements of fish, 
such as temperatures, currents, depths, salinity, and generally what is summed up in 
the word “‘oceanography.’’ But, while all these matters are necessarily involved in the 
great question of fishing and fisheries, they are not necessarily essential to the study 
of some of the more important problems that we have to deal with, and the international 
council which has been established with regard to the North Sea is finding that it has 
to limit its programme and to take up some of the more pressing and urgent questions, 
rather than to deal with the study of fish and fisheries of the ocean at large. And 
I should like very much if, in what I am saying, I could lead some gentleman on this 
side to tell us how far individual cases of urgent necessity have arisen where particular 
fisheries seem to require protection as contrasted with the wider study of the general 
questions of biology and of the metabolism of the sea generally. 
Having decided whether it is the fish or the fishermen that most require protection, 
it is for the states concerned in any fisheries which are common to them, as they necessarily 
are on the high seas beyond the territorial limits, to make up their minds as to the 
extent to which any regulations are needed and as to the direction which they should 
take. 
It may possibly be of interest to you here if I point out that, so far as any inter- 
national regulations on the other side of the Atlantic are concerned, in which England—the 
United Kingdom—at any rate, is interested, there is none which deals directly with the 
protection of the fish. The regulations deal with the protection of the fishermen; some- 
times protection of the fishermen against themselves; sometimes the protection of the 
fishermen against the elements; sometimes against undue competition, competition car- 
ried to the extent of what are commonly, or have in the past, been known as “outrages”’ 
committed on the persons and on the property of competing fishermen. Our interna- 
tional regulations have been directed to putting down abuses of that kind and to estab- 
lishing a system of international marine police which, on the one hand, should protect 
the territorial limits, but which is mainly established for the purpose of protecting the 
fishermen and preventing such ‘‘lewd outrages’’ as Mr. Olsen referred to, such unde- 
sirable practices as took place when the class of men known as the “coopers,” of whom 
you have heard, practically had the high seas to themselves and carried on a most 
undesirable traffic in intoxicating liquors, leading to very serious outrages, and, in many 
cases, to disaster. That has been entirely put down. The moment that these practices 
were recognized, the several nations interested agreed at once, without any demur, 
to establish a system of police and a method of license by which the traffic in intoxi- 
cating liquors among fishermen on the high seas, at any rate in that part of the sea 
which was particularly infested by these men, should be controlled. 
Then, as another instance of undesirable practices, is what you, I believe, on the 
United States coast know as the trawler, here practically unknown—that is to say, the 
trawler who fishes with a net drawn along the bottom of the sea. I believe I am right 
in assuming that by the trawl on this side is commonly meant the long line? 
The PRESIDENT. Yes. 
Mr. Fryer. But on the other side of the Atlantic the practice of trawling by nets 
whose mouths are held open by one or two very ingenious devices and which are drawn 
along the bottom—at or near the bottom—of the sea, is a practice which is extending 
enormously. I am told that one or two experiments have been made on the Nova 
Scotian coast, and I hear that it is proposed to send over some of these vessels to the 
banks on this side—the Newfoundland banks in particular—with a view to seeing 
