738 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



depletion of the fishing-banks, would meet with their approval. 

 These areas, compared with the whole of the North Sea, are 

 comparatively of small extent (see fig. 26). The area of the 

 North Sea between the three-mile line and a nine-mile limit 

 amounts to about 12,000 square miles, or 7 '4 per cent of the 

 whole area beyond three miles from the shore; and the area 

 between the three-mile line and a thirteen-mile limit amounts 

 to about 20,000 square miles, or 12'3 per cent. 



Meanwhile, the condition of the fishing-grounds in the North 

 Sea is described as serious by those who ought to know most 

 about it the trawlers who are daily working there ; and if 

 no remedy is timeously applied, the measures which will 

 eventually be necessary will transcend those which are now 

 proposed. 1 



But if it be imprudent to postpone indefinitely the seeking 

 of an international remedy for the depleted fisheries of the 

 North Sea, because the trawling industry fears that retaliatory 

 measures may be proposed against British trawlers on some 

 foreign coasts, it may be questioned, on the other hand, whether 

 the action taken to obviate such measures has always been 

 well-judged or in accordance with the true comity of nations. 

 On strictly selfish grounds, and for immediate profit, it is 

 doubtless justifiable to make every fishing-bank, wherever it 

 is situated, available for the enterprise of British capital, irre- 

 spective of the interests of the inhabitants of the adjoining 

 coast, if that can be managed. If, indeed, the resources of the 

 sea were inexhaustible, if it was impossible for the operations 

 of man to diminish the abundance of fish, then no limit of 

 exclusive fishing would be necessary : only such regulations 

 would be required as would enable fishing operations to be 

 conducted in an orderly manner. But the condition of the 

 North Sea alone proves the opposite. It shows also, what is 

 well enough understood, that unrestrained trawling on any 



1 Mr Frank Barrett, of Grimsby, thus referred to the condition of the North Sea 

 at the conference of the National Sea Fisheries Protection Association in 1905 : 

 " Unless they did something as a counterpoise to the continual trawling which was 

 going on, they would find themselves powerless as regarded that splendid fishing- 

 ground, the North Sea. He did not believe the North Sea, if left to itself, could 

 last for ever. He was one of those who thought it could not last very long ; and 

 he thought they should apply the lessons of science in order to rehabilitate the 

 North Sea." Fish Trades Gazette, Oct. 14, 1905. 



