INTERNATIONAL REGULATIONS OF FISHERIES ON THE HIGH SEAS. 95 
the North Sea in particular has for centuries been the resort of an ever-increas- 
ing number of fishing craft of different nationalities; and, with an ever-growing 
demand for the product of their industry, and with the increasing power and 
size of their vessels, especially since the introduction of steam, not only have the 
fishermen been brought into closer and more frequent contact with each other, 
over wider areas, but the opportunities, if not the need, for interchange of com- 
modities between them have also been enlarged. It is natural, therefore, that 
we should find in the case of the North Sea fisheries a greater diversity than 
elsewhere of purposes for which international regulations have been called 
for in relation to the better government, more orderly conduct, and greater 
prosperity of those engaged in their prosecution. 
The main objects toward which the regulations of this character have been 
directed have been fourfold: (1) The protection or further development of the 
fishing industry, as such; (2) the protection of the gear of the fishermen against 
injury; (3) the maintenance of law and order among fishermen; (4) the greater 
security of the lives and persons of the fishermen. These objects are, almost of 
necessity, the same as those which are aimed at in all fishery legislation, whether in 
inland waters or elsewhere, but their relative importance is practically reversed 
in the case of fisheries on the high seas as contrasted with what may be called the 
“domestic” or “national” fisheries. In the latter case, and more particularly 
in regard to river fisheries, not only are the effects of overfishing more readily 
made manifest, and the necessity for protection recognized, but the national 
laws, whether for the development of the particular industry or for the security 
of the property involved, are more easily enforced against all persons alike 
than in extraterritorial waters where differences of custom, of methods, of laws, and 
of language—to say nothing of interests—bring about unavoidable complications. 
Two nations whose fishermen practice different methods of fishing for the same 
kind of fish will not always admit that the same necessity exists for its protection 
or that the same remedy is the appropriate one. Each class of fishermen will 
probably attribute mischief to the method of fishing adopted by the others, and 
the mutual jealousies which exist between, for example, the seiners and the 
drifters, or the trawlers and the line fishermen, of the same nation—each attribut- 
ing to the acts of the other any falling off in the productiveness of the fisheries— 
are intensified when to difference of method is added difference of race. Hence 
the cases are rare in which international agreement has been arrived at with 
respect to regulations aimed directly at the protection of fish against over- 
fishing, alleged or real, on the high seas. 
The instances of the conventions between the United States and Canada 
for the preservation of the fisheries of the Great Lakes, or of the agreements 
between Germany, Holland, and Switzerland with respect to the salmon fisheries 
of the Rhine, are not appropriate to the present essay, since they relate to inland 
waters in which no extraterritorial rights are admitted, and not to the high 
