FISHERY PROBLEMS 191 



voyages, the enormous plaice, the gigantic flounders, the 

 myriads of cod, haddock, coalfish, ling, &c. ; fish which 

 were then, and are still, brought back gutted and pre- 

 served in ice. Yet just lately a change has been observed 

 in the products of the fishery, as always happens after a 

 few seasons on virgin grounds. The enormous specimens 

 which had peacefully grown old have disappeared, and 

 the size of the fish caught has perceptibly diminished 

 while the quality has improved ; the fish, however, are 

 still so abundant that a vessel can bring away, after three 

 weeks' fishing, the voyage there and back included, as 

 much as 70 tons net of fish. . . . About 150 English 

 steam trawlers fish regularly on the Iceland banks, 

 registered mostly in Aberdeen, where they land their 

 fish. A number of German trawlers fish on the same 

 grounds and ply from the same port." 



The inevitable day will come when the first reserves 

 will be exhausted by intensive trawling and I speak 

 more especially of bottom fish, of flat-fish. Then will 

 follow a state of equilibrium between the fishers and the 

 reproduction of the fish ; that is, a period of constant 

 fertility. Then, as in the North Sea, there will be a 

 decline. But as methods become perfected, as vessels 

 become large and costly, the shipowner will soon 

 abandon exhausted grounds ; and as the demand for fish 

 in the market does not decrease, and as hundreds of 

 thousands of men earn their living by fishery, unavoid- 

 able economic necessities will send the fishermen, almost 

 in spite of themselves, to new grounds, and so, by 

 a just compensation, will give the old an automatic 

 protection. One bank will " re-make " itself while 

 another is being exploited ; then the latter will be given 

 a rest while the fishing of the first is resumed ; and 

 so on. 



