292 SEA FISHERIES 



the mackerel is sold in France either fresh, salted, or 

 smoked. The annual catch weighs from 13,000 to 15,000 

 tons, and brings in from ^120,000 to .160,000. 



Another of the Scombridae, the tunny, is the object of 

 a lucrative fishery in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. 

 The Atlantic tunny, or white tunny, or germon, is taken 

 in the Bay of Biscay, beyond the course of the steamers 

 running from Ushant past Cape Finistere. It weighs 

 from 45 to 65 Ibs. ; its flesh, which is extremely white, is 

 admirably adapted for canning. All the summer through 

 the fishermen of Groix, Croisic, the He d'Yeu, Les Sables- 

 d'Olonne, and La Rochelle keep the sea, often for weeks 

 together, catching the white tunny with their lines. The 

 boats work in groups of four or five, and one of them in 

 rotation carries the catch to the factories ashore, where 

 the fish is sold in lots of twelve. The total value of the 

 fishery is over .280,000. In the Mediterranean the tunny 

 is a gigantic fish of a different species, its flesh being 

 rose-coloured, its weight running from 160 to 330 Ibs., 

 and its length from 5 to 6 feet. It is taken with the 

 harpoon or with the courantille, a huge net in which the 

 fish struggles, so causing the net to fold over it and im- 

 prison it, or the seinche, a kind of seine which com- 

 pletely encloses the shoal, 1 or, above all, by the 

 madrague. The fishery is not very flourishing. For 4,000 

 tons of the Atlantic tunny, scarcely 600 tons are caught 

 in the Mediterranean. The thonaires of Tunis are large 

 establishments, each of which comprises, besides the 

 vast madrague, a factory for canning the fish, preserved 

 in oil, and for the preparation of by-products. For some 



1 The shoal is imprisoned by a net drawn underneath it as well as 

 around it as by a huge " tuck-net." The seinche is drawn in until 

 the shoal is entirely surrounded by the heavy boats, into which the 

 fish are lifted by the harpooners. [TRANS.] 



