INTERNATIONAL REGULATIONS OF FISHERIES ON THE HIGH SEAS. 99 
gear on the high seas, under a convention in which the powers bordering on the 
North Sea are again concerned jointly, so far as regards that part of the ocean. +: 
In or about the year 1882, very serious complaints were made by British 
drift-net fishermen in the North Sea that it was the practice of certain foreign 
trawlers, chiefly Belgian, deliberately to cut through any drift nets that they 
might encounter and so clear a way for their trawl, continuing on their course 
without waiting to haul their gear and disentangle the net which they had 
fouled. For this purpose they carried a specially constructed iron implement, 
which got to be known as the “ Belgian devil,” shaped like a three or four pronged 
grapnel of considerable size, the inner sides of whose prongs or arms were fur- 
nished with cutting edges, and which they carried suspended in the water at such 
a depth that it automatically caught the footrope of the drift net, gathered the 
net in a loop, and severed it by the mere action of the trawl boat sailing, or 
steaming, on its course. A committee of inquiry found these complaints to be 
well founded and the result was an international convention forbidding the use or 
possession of any such engine for any such purpose under heavy penalties, and the 
“Belgian devil’ has now entirely disappeared from the North Sea. 
Abuses of such kinds as either of those just alluded to will, it may be hoped, 
be rare, but whenever they occur it may be expected that public opinion, in all 
countries, will readily support decisive and prompt conjoint action for their 
suppression. - It will, however, be always more necessary and more difficult to 
deal with those other and constantly recurring cases of unavoidable collision, 
more or less serious, between the boats and the gear of men lawfully and peace- 
fully pursuing their various avocations, with difierent kinds of engines, in the 
same waters. 
Wherever fishermen are attracted in large numbers to the same fishing 
grounds, there is always risk of damage fromsuchacause. Inthe NorthSeaalone, 
such diverse methods of fishing as trawling, seining in various forms, drifting and 
lining—not to mention other and less important modes—are employed at the 
same time within a comparatively narrow area, and often for the same kind of 
fish; and it may easily happen that, with the best intentions in the world, and 
with every desire to avoid all cause of conflict or dispute, the trawler may foul 
the nets of the drifter or the lines of the line-fisherman, or the drifter and trawler 
alike may disturb the seiner. 
To minimize such possibilities the International Code of Navigation Laws 
and of regulations for the lights at sea to be carried by fishing boats at night 
has done something, and so long as those regulations are observed it is com- 
paratively easy for one boat to avoid collision with another or with its gear. 
But, even so, occasional collisions are inevitable unless specified areas are set 
apart on which only one mode of fishing is permitted at one time. Even such 
a remedy as this would not remove all possibility of collision between boats of 
