FISHERIES PROTECTION 195 



intending to fish. The Board of Trade issued a notice 

 calling attention to this advice and the importance of 

 being guided by it, and reminding British fishermen of 

 the severity of the penalties incurred by an infraction of 

 the German law. 



The notorious case of the Moray Firth has been the 

 cause of much unnecessary work by cruisers, and of 

 great injustice to British fishermen. The Moray Firth 

 is an arm of the North Sea, in the north-east of 

 Scotland, 78 miles broad, and running south - west 

 for nearly 24 miles. It gives abundant and 

 excellent fish, yet the waters have been closed to 

 British fishermen, although foreigners have been and 

 are at liberty to get what they can catch. They have 

 done so and taken their cargoes to Aberdeen and other 

 markets and sold them. Such a state of things would 

 make far less renowned fighters than North Sea men 

 break laws, and they have used every artifice to evade 

 the regulation. 



Strong feeling against foreign trawlers has naturally 

 arisen ; but not even heavy punishments can stop the 

 efforts of British fishermen to reap some of the advan- 

 tage which is so freely and unjustly given to foreign 

 rivals. At the end of May 1911 the master of a Hull 

 trawler pleaded guilty at the Wick Sheriff Court to 

 trawling within the Moray Firth limit. He was fined 

 ^100, with the option of sixty days' imprisonment, and 

 that severe sentence is typical of the heavy penalties 

 that are constantly imposed on British fishermen for 

 doing what is done with safety and impunity by 

 foreigners. 



What the following up of reports and rumours of 



