AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 1413 



coast without bait and ice. With the ice and bait which they procure 

 here the Americans fish on LaHave, Brown, and Port LeBear Bank* 

 Until this year the Canadian vessels took codfish all bv hand-lining 

 The Americans always trawled with the bait and ice which they proi 

 cured from me. I consider trawling a very injurious method of taking 

 fish. 



Sworn to at Lockeport, in the county of Shclburne, this 22d day of 

 August, A. D. 1877. 



PAEKER MATTHEWS, 

 f Shclburne, this 22d day 



AUSTKN LOCKE, J. /'. 



No. 279. 



; In the matter of the Fisheries Commission, at Halifax, under the Treaty 



of Washington. 



I, EGBERT DEAGLE, of Souris, in the county of Kings, and province 

 of Prince Edward Island, but at present of Harbor-au-Bcuche, in the 

 county of Antigonishe. and province of Nova Scotia, fisherman, make 

 oath and say as follows : 



1. I have been a practical fisherman for the past twenty years. 

 During ten years of that time I have been employed in American ves- 

 sels from the port of Gloucester principally, and I have had large ex,- 

 perieuce in and have a very perfect knowledge of seine-fishing. 1 have 

 fished both on the American coast and in the Gulf of Saint Liwrence, 

 and on the shores of Newfoundland and Labrador. 

 p 2. I am well acquainted with the cod fishery as carried on by the 

 American fishermen in our waters, and I believe the practice of trawl- 

 ing, followed by the Americans fishing for codfish, tends to destroy the 

 mother fish when they are spawning, and otherwise is injurious to the 

 fishery. 



3. I estimate that there has been an average of three hundred mack- 

 erel-catching vessels from United States ports in our waters during each 

 of the last twenty years. I myself have known of four hundred sail of 

 United States fishing-vessels in our waters in a single season, and there 

 would be a great many of which I would have no knowledge. It is im- 

 possible for any one person to know of all the American vessels fishing 

 in our waters in any one season. The average catch of mackerel each 

 season is about three hundred and fifty barrels per vessel. Last spring 

 there were abjut one hundred vessels fishing for herring at the Magda- 

 lens, and they caught their usual catch of from seven hundred to one 

 thousand barrels per vessel. I have known one American vessel in the 

 Gulf of Saint Lawrence to get fourteen hundred barrels of mackerel in 

 a single season. 



4. I have been seine-master of American fishing vessels, and have 

 nsed seines in catching mackerel both in American and Canadian 

 waters, and I perfectly understand fishing with seines. In American 

 waters I have used seines two hundred and twenty-live fathoms long 

 and thirty fathoms deep, and in our shallower waters 1 have fished, 

 while employed in American vessels, with seines one hundred and eighty 



; fathoms long and twenty fathoms or less in depth. The Americai 

 ! mackerel fishery has been almost destroyed by using these seines, a 

 ' it will not take long to ruin our fisheries if the Americans are permitted 



to use them here. It is only during the last two or three years 

 . these "purse-seines," as they are called, have been used in our waters. 



