INJURIES TO THE FISHERIES BY SEALS. 129 



dangerous contact with these weapons. Seal-hunting from a boat 

 is not very pleasant for sportsmen, because it can be done only in 

 winter, and even then is very uncertain. An effective protection 

 against Seals, therefore, cannot be obtained in this way, and even 

 the granting of rewards for killing them would not answer the 

 purpose, because the hunter can only in very rare cases prove 

 that his shot has been successful, as the dead Seal cannot be 

 taken from the surface of the water, but sinks to the bottom. 



Even if the fisherman should succeed in keeping these animals 

 at bay by firearms, this would be possible only while they were 

 working their nets in the fishing-grounds ; but as soon as the 

 boats were gone the Seals would do as much injury as before. In 

 favourable weather nets and bow-nets remain in the water from 

 twenty-four to forty-eight hours before they are hauled in and 

 the fish taken out, while in stormy weather four or five days may 

 pass before a boat will venture out to haul in the nets. Such a 

 period, when, owing to the power of the elements, fishing is at a 

 standstill, is made good use of by the Seals, so that, after such 

 pauses, torn nets and half-devoured fish are found in the fishing- 

 grounds instead of nets full of fish. 



Such occurrences are exceedingly common during the season 

 when the Seals visit our coasts, and no one who has not seen the 

 damage done to the fishing apparatus by the Seals can have an 

 adequate idea of the extent of the calamity, especially during last 

 winter. Among the rest, a number of bow-nets for catching 

 Cod in the Neustadt Bay had been repeatedly torn to such a 

 degree that it took weeks, and a considerable outlay of money and 

 labour to repair the damage. 



In the neighbourhood of the Schlei, where there were hun- 

 dreds of flounder-nets, these were so badly injured by the Seals 

 that in a few weeks they had become useless. In the inner por- 

 tion of the Eckernforde Bay, nets and bow-nets (a particularly 

 large number of the latter) were injured by Seals to such an 

 extent that when they were taken ashore to be dried they had 

 many holes large enough for a man to creep through. In some 

 cases the fishermen were compelled to stop fishing, although 

 there were plenty of fish and the prices were high, simply because 

 the Seals had destroyed their apparatus. The Cod fisheries by 

 means of bow-nets have a still greater attraction for Seals 

 than the fisheries with stationary nets, because in the meshes of 



