22 Change in Fisheries. 



been the sole fish carriers ; though, mark ! the van rates have 

 never been reduced. 



Changes in Typical Fisheries, Taken as a whole, Leigh 

 Fishery Station has passed through successive stages of rise 

 and decline of certain fisheries. Here suffice to say that stake- 

 nets or stop-nets in the creeks for several sorts of fish, " banding" 

 a modification for "trotting" for flat fish, the long-lining for 

 cod, &c., the English Channel dredging for oysters, and several 

 other fisheries, each having its predominant influence for the 

 time being at the Leigh centre, have either passed entirely 

 away or declined to a nonentity (consult sect. VI., Special 

 Fisheries). Those fisheries for which Leigh as a fisheries 

 station is now best known viz., shrimping, whitebaiting, and 

 cockling belong to the 19th century and relatively are of modern 

 growth, particularly cockling, whose rise is quite recent. 

 Neither is shrimping the oldest fishery, as Dr. Laver* says : 

 " Of late years, however, they have been forced to go much 

 farther out to sea than they were wont to do, in consequence of 

 the great increase of impurities in the water, and the disturb- 

 ance caused by the passing up and down of large numbers of 

 steamships bound to and from the Port of London." A ten- 

 dency to the very reverse is the case, the Leigh men rather 

 grumbling at the restrictions to their passing up-river. Still 

 less is it a fact, as the same writer mentions, that : " Another 

 section of the Leigh fishermen spends many weeks and months 

 trawling for fish in the North Sea." Possibly the allusion is 

 here meant to apply to the Leigh pink-shrimpers who make 

 Harwich a summer rendezvous ; but even these, as we hereafter 

 shew, leave and return daily to port. Again, their fishing 

 grounds there are either inshore or slightly offshore i.e., from 

 the Gunfleet and East Swin northwards by the Sunk and Cork 

 towards Orfordness. The above therefore enforce the practical 

 lesson how necessary further information is desirable on the 



* " The Mammals, Reptiles and Fishes of Essex." The latest of the Essex Field Club 

 Special Memoirs. Vol. III. Introduction, p. 13. (Chelmsford and London, 1898.) 



