DESTRUCTION FOR FOOD 149 



FISHERIES 



Since the days when the Azilian wanderers from Europe 

 cast on their refuse-heaps in Oronsay the remains of the 

 Wrasse and the Sea- Bream, the Conger Eel, the Spiny 

 Dog-fish and many another, the wealth of our seas has been 

 increasingly purloined on behalf of man. The extent of 

 Scottish sea-fisheries was the constant wonder of early 

 travellers from other lands. "It is impossible to describe 

 the immense quantity of fish. The old proverb says already 

 'Piscinata Scotia'/' wrote Don Pedro de Ayala, ambassador 

 from Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1498 ; and so also the 

 Italian, Ubaldini, in 1529: 



They have besides. ..an incredible quantity offish from all parts of the 

 island and especially when one goes more towards the North, in such 

 fashion, that the people of the Island being unable to consume so much 

 fish, furnish and load infinite ships every year for France, Flanders, Zeland, 

 Holand, and Germany, and inland even, and even into other and more 

 distant countries, but for the delight of richer, greedy or more gluttonous 

 men. 



It is little to be wondered at, therefore, that our own 

 historians found it difficult adequately to describe the re- 

 sources of our seas. Leslie (1578) says the "Lochis or 

 bosumis of the Sey" are "copious in herring miracolouslie," 

 so that, as the Wardlaw chronicler mentions a hundred years 

 later, "the greatest hearing sold for twopence, at least a 

 penny, the least, two farthings, the hundred. No such penny 

 worth in the world." 



"As tuecheng [touching] vthiris fishes," continues Leslie, "I can nocht 

 tell, gif in ony place in the warlde, athir be mair varietie or mair abundance, 

 of sum kyndes, baith freshe and salt water fishe." 



The abundance offish led to extraordinary slaughter, in 

 which foreign vessels played no little part. It is on record 

 that in one year three thousand busses or small fishing 

 smacks were known to have been employed by the Dutch 

 in the herring fishing in Shetland, beside those fitted out 

 by the Hamburghers, Bremeners and other northern nations; 

 and in recent years the number of fishing craft working 

 round the Scottish coasts has exceeded 10,000, while the 

 amount of fish landed outruns eight million hundredweights. 



What the ultimate result of such destruction has been 

 upon the apparently inexhaustible resources of the sea, it is 



