20 BRITISH FISHERIES 



The complaints that were made of injurious 

 fishing fall into two classes : it was asserted that 

 each class of fishermen interfered with the opera- 

 tions of others ; and it was also asserted that certain 

 methods in use had a permanent effect in reducing 

 the value of the fishing grounds. With regard 

 to the first class of complaints, it is evident that 

 almost any one kind of fishing must almost inevit- 

 ably interfere with some other. I have already 

 given an instance of such a kind in referring to 

 the Scottish herring trawling agitation. If beam- 

 trawlers, drift-netters, and liners are working to- 

 gether on a restricted area, it will frequently 

 happen that the trawler will sail over a train of 

 drift-nets and injure the latter with his trawl warp, 

 or he may drag his trawl across a long line and 

 do a certain amount of damage to this. Nearly 

 every class of fisherman made such complaints 

 against some other, but most of them combined 

 in crediting the trawler with more than his share 

 of this kind of malpractice. The latter was, in 

 fact, a kind of piscatorial Ishmael. 



Now, these complaints had no doubt a real 

 basis of fact. But one method of fishing cannot 

 equitably be prohibited or restricted at the expense 

 of another. The Commissioners took up an 

 attitude on this matter which at first sight seems 

 eminently reasonable. The sea, they said, is the 

 property of all, and no one has any vested right 

 or exclusive interest in the exploitation of any 



