NATURE 



421 



THURSDAY, APRIL i, 1875 



DEEP-SEA FISHING 

 Deep-Sea Fishing and Fishing Boats. An Account of the 

 Practical Working of the various Fisheries around the 

 British Islands. With Illustrations, &c. By Edmund 

 W. H. Holdsworth, F.L.S., &c., late Secretary to the 

 Royal Sea Fisheries Commission. (London : Edward 

 Stanford, Charing Cros?, 1S74.) 



MR. HOLDSWORTH, having officiated as secretary 

 to the Royal Commissioners who inquired into the 

 state of the British fisheries in 1863, and whose report 

 was presented to Parliament in 1866, has had access to 

 the very best information and to people who have all the 

 " ins and outs " of the fisheries at their fingers' ends. 

 As might be expected, therefore, from the opportunities of 

 its author, this is an excellent work of its kind, forming a 

 complete director)' to the fishing ports of Great Britain and 

 Ireland ; and persons about to embark in any kind of 

 fishery enterprise could not have a better guide. Although 

 the author makes no parade of being scientific, and has 

 no pretension to unfold other than an unvarnished tale 

 of our fishery resources, the book is not devoid of inte- 

 rest for scientific persons, seeing that it contains some 

 account of Prof. Sars' discoveries with regard to the float- 

 ing of fish spawn. Moreover, Mr. Holdsworth's work 

 appears opportunely enough, seeing that the daily news- 

 papers are indulging in discussions regarding oyster-spat, 

 over-dredging, and cognate subjects. 



The question of " over-fishing " is of the first import- 

 ance, because we are dependent on the sea for a vast 

 proportion of our food supplies. On this subject the 

 author of " Deep-Sea Fishing " is evidently at one with 

 his late masters, but in discussing it he is compelled to 

 admit a large increase in the machinery of capture ; 

 indeed, the book is very much a record of that fishery 

 improvement which, so far as the catching apparatus 

 is concerned, has now become pretty general. Although 

 it is wise to accept, discuss, and analyse all the informa- 

 tion we are able to lay hands upcn which bears on the 

 question of our daily supplies of food, we shall not 

 at present say more about " over-fishing," so far as 

 that question is incidentally alluded to by Mr. Holds- 

 worth, than that his inferences and his facts are very 

 much at variance. Put in a nutshell, nothing can with- 

 stand the logic of the case for those who say we are 

 "over-fishing ;" it is, that the supply of fish being equal to 

 what it was, an increased number of boats and an im- 

 proved mode of capture, with constant multiplication of 

 the apparatus of capture, should, in a given ratio, add to 

 the supplies of fish which are brought to market. Issue 

 has been joined between those who say our fisheries are 

 not so productive as they ought to be, and those who 

 aver that we are "over-fishing;" and, so far as the 

 evidence we have seen goes, the latter party have, we 

 think, the best of the argument. 



It is of the greatest importance to the present and future 

 of our fisheries that we should fish with economy, and, 

 above all, that we should fish in such a manner as will not 

 wantonly waste the spawn of our best table fishes. At pre- 

 sent the waste of spawn, through the capture of gravid and 

 Vol. XI.— No. 283 



immature fish, is so enormous as to be incalculable. It 

 has been said of the salmon, that althcugh an individual 

 may be of the value of ten shillings per pound weight on 

 a Bend-street counter, it is wcith five times that price 

 when it is on the spawning "pcdds." The same may be 

 said of all fish, even of those which we least esteem for 

 food purposes. In times past, fish have been held so 

 cheap, in consequence of the liberal ideas which were 

 prevalent as to their great abundance, that men thought 

 it of no importance whether the fish they ate were or 

 were not full of spawn ; indeed, customers thought them- 

 selves rather ill-treated when their fish-merchant sent 

 them a fish without its roe ; and, as a rule, fishmongers 

 cannot do otherwise than send " full fish " to all who 

 purchase, for the very excellent reason that it is at the 

 season when they arc about to become reproductive that 

 man obtains easy access to ihem. It is also the season 

 when they are most unfit for food. No grazier or cattle- 

 feeder in his right mind would kill a cow when large 

 with calf, or a mare big with foal. And putting the case 

 another way, if all our oxen were killed as calves, and 

 our sheep while they were lambs, should we not very 

 speedily be on the verge of famine ? Yet these are the 

 modes of doing business which prevail in our fisheries. 

 It is well that the inhabitants of the sea are so piolific in 

 their seasons of reproductiveness ; were they less so than 

 they are, a very few years would exhaust even the pro- 

 ductive cod banks of Newfoundland. 



As regards salmon, the percentage of eggs which come 

 to life and yield fish is pretty well known, as is also the 

 percentage of young fish which is destroyed. The num- 

 ber of salmon {Salmo salat) which escape infantile perils 

 and become reproductive is very small, not ten per cent. 

 Out of every hundred eggs spawned in the natural state, 

 it may be calculated that at least one-third escape the 

 action of the fecundating milt, that another third never, 

 from various causes, come to life, which leaves only one- 

 third to produce fish ; and of the thirty-three tiny animals 

 thus left, a full half will be killed by enemies, which are 

 numerous, leaving, say, sixteen young smolts to become 

 grilse, and as these have to make one voyage to the sea, 

 or probably two, before they become reproductive, their 

 number in the end becomes sadly reduced, so reduced 

 that probably not five of them will be able to repeat 

 the story of their birth and so provide future supplies. 

 If the mortality incident to fish life be so great in a 

 salmon river, what must it not be in the ravening 

 depths of the ocean .' A large cod-fish we know yields 

 more than a million of eggs, but when we consider the 

 fact of these eggs being entrusted to the boisterous 

 waves of the sea, we have little hope that the yield of 

 reproducing fish will be greater than in the case of the 

 salmon, which enjoys the comparative tranquillity of in- 

 land streams. Much ignorance has hitherto prevailed as 

 to how fish spawn. The salmon we have been able to 

 watch day by day, and to note every action whilst it is 

 engaged in that great function of its nature, and we also 

 know a little about the reproduction of the herring, but as 

 regards the reproductive modus operandi of our larger 

 sea-fish, much that we know, or think we know, is only 

 the result of guessing or of reasoning from analogy. M. 

 Sars has discovered that the ova of some fishes, notably 

 the ova of the cod {Gadus morrhud) and of the plaice 



