FACTORS OF DESTRUCTION 113 



tartaneSy which never work very far from the coast. All 

 oceanographers are agreed in declaring that the ox-trawl 

 is par excellence the worst engine of destruction. Not 

 only has the number of fish captured by this means 

 diminished during the last fifty years, but the size of the 

 fish is constantly decreasing. Whiting, gurnards, turbot, 

 and fishing-frogs, says M. Gounet, are no longer repre- 

 sented by large and mature specimens. Hunted and 

 decimated on every hand, the adults are unable to evade 

 the search of which they are the quarry, and so are 

 denied the opportunity of full development. The young 

 fish in turn find no shelter from the intensive exploitation 

 of the fishing-grounds. The impoverishment of the 

 former fishing-grounds has resulted in the retirement of 

 all the "tartanes" of Marseilles. 



The gangui fishery has not the importance of the 

 ordinary trawling fishery ; it is counted among the small 

 fisheries ; so here again we find the small fisherman 

 guilty of wholesale destruction. I shall presently touch 

 upon the devastation of which he is guilty when he works 

 the inshore waters with a device far more pernicious 

 than the curtain-net, the seine, or the eel-spear the 

 prawn-net or shrimp-trawl. 



The prawn-net belongs to the category of small-meshed 

 drag-nets. 1 It gathers, pell-mell, all that comes in its 

 way, and as the bays, estuaries, and shallow bottoms are 

 the favourite haunts both of prawns and of young fish, 



1 The prawn-net or shrimp-trawl (chalut a chevrettes) is a result of 

 the French decree of May 10, 1862, of which more hereafter. This 

 decree reduced the mesh of trawl-nets to -98 of an inch, whereas 

 Articles 36 and 116 of the decree of July 4, 1853, na ^ fixed the 

 minimum at 1-38 inches. The prawn-fishers, who before 1862 had 

 used the ordinary shrimp-net, hastened to adopt the trawl. Thence- 

 forth the boats were equipped with two trawls : one for fish and one 

 for prawns. 



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