TRAWLING. 39 



dart forwards towards the entrance, they may have to 

 go perhaps forty or fifty feet, the distance probably 

 between the centre of the curved ground-rope and the 

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

 The chancres of escape are, therefore, very small, when 

 once the back of the net is fairly over them. In the 

 case of round fish, although they may dart some dis- 

 tance on being disturbed, the fact of their not trying 

 to bury themselves, but to rise from the ground, 

 enables the ground rope to pass under them often 

 without further disturbance. 



The great resistance offered by the trawl to the for- 

 ward movement of the vessel towing it, a resistance 

 sufficient to reduce her speed in a good breeze perhaps 

 from eight knots to one knot in the hour, is very com- 

 monly 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 argu- 

 ments used by those persons who have declaimed 

 against trawling, as causing the destruction of vast 

 quantities of fish spawn, the opponents of this method 

 of fishing apparently having been unaware that the 

 trawl can only do its work when the beam is raised 

 clear of the ground by the trawl-heads or irons. And 

 the discovery by Professor Sars, that the spawn of 

 almost all our edible fishes floats during development, 

 explains the entire absence of evidence of fish spawn 

 being brought up in the trawl, as the trawlers have 

 been charged with doing to an enormous extent. The 

 difficulty of towing the trawl over the ground is, with- 



