because we do not know that any schemes of development are 

 in contemplation. Also if a period of much greater exploitation 

 of the fishing grounds should come about in the near future — 

 say, as the result of a condition of severe food shortage — then 

 the results that we give here will make it all the easier to find 

 the point at which we may be taking more from the fishing 

 grounds than the recuperative powers of the latter can stand. 

 But we hope that the tendency of these investigations, and those 

 others that they suggest, will be in the direction of culture 

 and development. 



The Natural History Results. 



From the point of view of general marine biology the 

 results indicated in the report raise very curious and fascinating 

 (and perhaps economically significant) problems. The shallow 

 sea off the Lancashire and Cheshire coasts, and the foreshore 

 there, may be rather unattractive to the zoologist. The 

 foreshore is mostly sand and mud ; there is much pollution 

 from the adjacent cultivated and densely populated land area, 

 and the fauna and flora are commonplace from the point of 

 view of the naturalist collector. But the entire region is one 

 of extraordinarily high production because most of the organic 

 matter, in the form of foodstuffs, that is consumed in the 

 densely populated country draining into the Irish Sea off the 

 coasts of Cumberland, Lancashire and Cheshire is again 

 converted into organic matter. This enormous production of 

 proteid, fat and carbohydrate that goes on in the sea, entirely 

 from waste materials, is almost wholly beyond human control. 

 Only in the case of the mussel transplantation experiments, 

 made at Morecambe by the Committee, has there been any 

 attempt at utilising this production from waste matters. The 

 question of how still further to make use of the surplus pro- 

 duction of the sea may well become one of prime importance 

 in the future, and what appear now to be perfectly abstruse 

 problems of pure marine biology may require to be studied 



