122 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISTT AND FISHERIES. 



The beam-trawl is now used almost exclusively on the coast of Great 

 Britain for the capture of the more important food-fishes, especially of 

 the turbot and sole, few of which reach the markets captured in any 

 other way. About nine thousand tons of iish are furnished annually 

 from this source alone to the London market ; and it is not too much to 

 say that without its use it would be impossible to furnish the English 

 markets with fish. 



There are other modifications of the trawl in different countries, all, 

 however, on the same general principle of the dragging of a bag of 

 netting along the sea-bottom. Sometimes this is carried under the ves- 

 sel, where it is used particularly for the capture of whitebait and other 

 small fish. In other cases, as in Spain, two vessels are used. The 

 simplest form, however, that in common use by the English, French, 

 ami Dutch trawlers, is as described. This is dragged behind the ves- 

 sel at the rate of one or two miles an hour, always with the current, and 

 is sometimes kept down for several hours in succession. 



Many objections have been brought to the use of the beam-trawl on 

 the score of its exhausting the grounds, destroying the spawn of the 

 fishes, killing great numbers of small fry, &c. A royal commission was 

 therefore ordered to investigate the whole subject of the methods of 

 capturing fish in the British dominions, and to determine whether any of 

 them were hurtful or not. This was composed of Professor Huxley, Mr. 

 James Caird, and Mr. S. Le Fevre, who took up the subject, and after 

 investigating it most thoroughly gave it as their opinion that, so far from 

 being a destructive method of fishing, the use of the beam-trawl was one 

 of the most commendable 5 that it involved no greater unnecessary waste 

 to fish life than other methods, and less than most ; that so far from 

 destroying the spawn of fish, no one could show that an egg of a fish 

 was ever taken in it, especially in view of the fact that cod, mackerel, 

 the turbot, and the flat-fish generally, the eggs of which it was especially 

 accused of destroying in great numbers, all spawn in the open sea, their 

 eggs floating generally near the surface until hatched, and that, con- 

 sequently, the beam-trawl could have no influence whatever upon them. 

 It was also shown that the actual nesting-places of many of the fish, 

 such as the herring, &c, are among the rocky portions of the sea-bot- 

 tom, where the beam-trawl could not be used, requiring, as it does, a 

 perfectly smooth, level sea-bottom for its action. 



The masses of so-called fish spawn taken up from the bottom by the 

 beam-trawl, has proved, in all cases to belong to one of the lowest forms 

 of sea animals, either the Alcyonum digitatum, or so-called dead man's 

 fingers, on the English coast, or to the compound ascidian, very abun- 

 dant in America. 



The report of the commission states emphatically as the final result 

 of its inquiries that this mode of fishing has been prosecuted in many 

 localities from fifty to a hundred years, not only without diminishing 

 the supply, but indeed showing increased captures, in consequence of 

 the increased number and size of the vessels employed. 



