104 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF NORWICH AND DISTRICT 
undreamed of, and rich shares awarded the venturesome fishermen. 
All these conditions created a boom which intensified the slump which 
was to follow, bringing ruin in its train, when drifters returning from 
naval duties again took up the fishery. 
In 1919 and 1920 the Government came to the aid of a stricken industry 
with guarantee schemes. But these could not save the situation in which 
a fleet diminishing slowly from its prosperous pre-War dimensions was 
endeavouring to cater for a sadly shrunken market. 
In its recent investigations the Sea Fish Commission discovered that 
over a 20-year span the total export of herring had dropped by about 
55 per cent.; and the sale for home consumption has dropped by about 
45 per cent. In almost the same period the number of drifters has only 
declined from 1,470 to 1,088—about a third of which belong to Yarmouth 
and Lowestoft. So the inability to make a living becomes patent. 
And all the while, under the protection it is within their power to give, 
our former principal herring customers are creating industries of their 
own. Germany is omitting no opportunity of expanding her production 
of herrings. State-subsidised drifters are fulfilling the home demand 
to an extent increasing yearly, and the German trawler fleet, by a new 
method of fishing, now takes home to Germany a volume of herrings 
equal to our Yarmouth-Lowestoft catch. Even Poland, Finland, and 
Estonia have entered the ranks of herring producers instead of remaining 
merely customers. 
The investigation into the life history of the herring has made great 
strides in recent years, and from a yearly census which is taken of herring 
population of the southern North Sea it has been found possible to 
forecast the composition of the herring catch with some accuracy. 
During the past few months the regulation of the herring fisheries 
has passed to the Herring Industry Board, to which many look to rescue 
this great East Anglian industry from the slough of despond to which 
the recent difficult years have brought it. 
The author wishes to acknowledge with thanks his indebtedness to 
Messrs. G. T. Atkinson, J. M. Barclay, T. H. Barry, H. C. Boardman, 
the late J. G. Bower, W. H. ffiske, H. G. Golder, J. Hardy, R. T. Harmer, 
E. D. Mackintosh, F. L. Newhouse, E. A. Parker, L. H. Read, W. H. 
Scott, and Major E. Felce, for their valuable help in the compilation of 
this section. 
