58 BRITISH SEA-FISHERIES 



food-reserves on the Dogger Bank, which seem provi- 

 dentially designed for the fattening of plaice, are 

 wasted on worthless dabs and baby haddocks. Thus 

 may one cause of impoverishment lead on to another. 

 Perhaps the right remedy in a case like this is to 

 promote the wholesale transplantation of young plaice, 

 as in the case of oysters, mussels, etc. The ex- 

 periments already made by the Marine Biological 

 Association point strongly in this direction. 



Thirdly, the excessive destruction of young fish is 

 another, and perhaps the greatest, cause of the im- 

 poverishment of the sea. The destruction is enor- 

 mous. In the winter of 1882-1883 it was estimated 

 that in the Firth of Forth, the Firth of Tay, and the 

 Moray Firth, 143,000,000 of young herrings and a 

 much greater quantity of sprats were captured. 

 These were mostly sold as manure. Yet the herring 

 does not decrease; it is the flat-fish, the plaice and 

 the sole, that suffer most. In 1896, 368 tons of 

 small fish were seized by the Fishmongers Company 

 at Billingsgate ; in 1897, 143 tons ; and in 1898, 96 tons. 

 These were sold as manure or destroyed. Mr. Holt 

 estimates that, while over 7,000,000 mature plaice were 

 landed in the port of Grimsby during the year April, 

 1893, to March, 1894, over 9,000,000 plaice not sexually 

 mature were brought to port ; or, taking the trade 

 distinction between ' small ' and ' large ' fish, over 

 6,500,000 plaice under 13 inches in length were landed, 

 as against 9,700,000 over 13 inches. So many as 10,407 

 young plaice have been taken from a single drag of 

 a shrimp trawl. These are but a few instances out of 

 many, showing the great destruction which is going 

 on among the young of our more valuable food-fishes. 

 The questions they suggest are still a matter of 

 discussion. Whether even this destruction has an 

 appreciable effect on the adult population is debatable. 

 It does not seem to have affected the herring ; and we 



