INLETS AND OPFING FISHEEIES THEIR CORRELATION. 107 



It is certainly the fact that three fishermen, in ordinary weather, could 

 easily fill a schnapper boat in a few hours. But these fisheries would never 

 stand the racket of half a century's persistent fishing, as did Long Reef and 

 the Port Hacking, Botany, Coogee, and Broken Bay grounds, as well as the 

 grounds off our own harbour. In my opinion, a very few years' heavy fishing 

 would impoverish them, because, unlike the grounds just mentioned, there 

 are no neighbouring nurseries like Port Jackson, Cowan, Pittwater, Brisbane 

 Water, Port Hacking, Botany, and George's Eiver,from which they could draw 

 constant streams of immigrating red bream. And though the coastal rivers 

 are admirably conditioned for the propagation and growth of the mullet and 

 other families, they are not for the schnapper family. There is too much fresh 

 water in them in flood times, and in di'ought times they are too much infested 

 by submarine growths fatal both to oyster life and to the lives of the 

 young of some of the deep water fishes, of the schnapper family in particular. 

 With regard to the spawning of the schnapper, it is most unfortunate that 

 very little is known. The commonly accepted belief among fishermen and 

 other observers is that the schnapper spawns in quiet places outside the 

 inlets as a rule, while some river-hunting fish spawn in suitable places within 

 their range of habitat. The school fish, easily recognised by all of us who 

 are familiar with the family, by their colour and other well-known features, 

 are generally said to deposit their ova towards the middle of the summer 

 months ; as a rule, not later than Pebruary. The schnapper in its later 

 developments is known to change its habitat, and to frequent inshore reefs and 

 inlets, and there to spawn. The young fry in all cases seek for an asylum 

 from their enemies, and for food otherwise denied them, in sheltered deeps 

 where they can fatten on the spawn of other fish, and particularly of oysters 

 and other mollusks and crustaceans, and on the manifold microscopic organ- 

 isms in which the waters of these asylums are so fertile. 



In shallow rivers, like those I have nailied,the black -bream and its congener 

 the tarwhine prospers, but not the red bream. The red bream— that is to 

 say, the year old progeny of the schnapper, generally hatched at sea, 

 becomes from itscock-schnapper period, a denizen of the inlets. He is very 

 rarely caught in the offing grounds. The inlets with deep water in them are 

 his ordained nurseries, and in them he remains until, by an instinct not at 

 present to be analysed by our observers, he feels that it is time for him to 

 leave the nursery, and reach out to the submarine and tumultuous world 

 outside. Let those nurseries be harried by nets and other agencies of 

 destruction, as Port Jackson, Port Hacking, Botany, and George's Eiver, 

 and the deep portions of Broken Bay have been hai'ried, and their olfshore 

 fisheries will report at once a lack of schnapper. But still some youngsters 

 are left in the nurseries, and these, in due course, instinctively seek the reefs 

 and school grounds outside, and the race, for market purposes, is not 

 absolutely extinguished. So, all our neighbouring schnapper grounds, still 

 though to a very limited degree, produce some schnapper. The catalogue 

 of a successful day's fishing reaches a dozen fish now, which twenty years 

 ago reached 20 or even 40 dozen. But the breed is not extinct, because the 

 nursery is always at hand, and some few parent fish are left to restock their 

 natural fattening grounds. 



For the next decade or so I think the magnificent area of shoal grounds 

 (known as Sir John Young Banks) lying slightly within the Shoalhaven 

 Bight, and the equally productive grounds lying between the Broughton 

 Islands and Cape Hawke, replenished in one* case by the deep adjacent inlets 

 of Jervis Bay, and in the other by those of Port Stephens, will be found 

 sufficiently well stocked with schnapper to withstand the severest drain on 



