THE BE A M- TRA WL. 269 



fore, as the trawl is slowly towed along, the ground-rope 

 disturbs the flat-fish, their first impulse is to move a short 

 distance forwards and again bury themselves ; but the 

 ground-rope is steadily pressing on as the trawl advances, 

 and they are again soon disturbed. This proceeding 

 almost certainly ends in the fish, sooner or later, passing 

 over the ground-rope and entering the net. They cannot 

 then escape upwards, because the back of the net is above 

 them, and if they dart forwards towards the entrance they 

 may have to go perhaps forty or fifty feet, the distance 

 between the centre of the curved ground-rope and the 

 beam, before they can get clear of the advancing net. 

 When fishing for whiting, haddock, or other round fish, the 

 trawl is towed a little faster than when working for soles, 

 and although such fish on being disturbed may dart some 

 little distance, the fact of their not trying to bury them- 

 selves, but to rise from the ground, often enables the 

 ground-rope to pass under them without further distur- 

 bance. 



The great resistance offered by the trawl to the forward 

 movement of the vessel towing it a resistance sufficient to 

 reduce her speed in a good breeze from perhaps seven or 

 eight knots to one knot in the hour is very commonly 

 ascribed to the supposed great pressure of the beam and 

 net on the bottom, and to their not being towed lightly 

 over the ground, but dragged through it. This has been 

 the foundation of most of the arguments used by those who 

 believe that trawling tears up the ground and destroys any 

 fish spawn there may be upon it, they apparently being 

 unaware that the trawl can only do its work when the 

 beam is raised well clear of the ground by the trawl-irons, 

 and that the weight of the net is very materially lessened 

 by the fact of its being expanded by the water. 



