70 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF BLACKPOOL AND DISTRICT 



Channel in the South to the North Channel between Ireland and south-west 

 Scotland, where greater depths to 149 fathoms occur, and on the eastern side 

 by a shallower, shelving, sandy bottom decreasing in depth shorewards from 

 about 20 fathoms off the Isle of Man. 



The sea is large enough to maintain its own fish population, of which plaice, 

 dabs, skates and rays, gurnards, flounders and the sole are mostly resident 

 and are commercially important. Other fishes invade the Irish Sea for feeding 

 or spawning, such as hake, cod, haddock, whiting, mackerel, sea-perch, 

 grey mullet and herring, possibly some plaice and sole, and provide valuable 

 fisheries. The shallow waters and extensive foreshores of sand on the east 

 make excellent rearing grounds for those forms of life on which fish food, i.e., 

 small fishes, bivalves, crustaceans and worms, thrive, while the foreshores are 

 suitable for the support of vast numbers of cockles and mussels and other 

 molluscs. 



The propinquity of abundance of fish off the Lancashire coast with a large 

 industrial population inland and near is linked by the development of a hardy 

 race of fishermen. Some thousand sailing craft of various sizes, including 

 about 120 of first-class standard, fished from the Lancashire ports in the 

 early '90's, and landed about 57,000 cwts. of fish annually. But about this 

 time steam-trawlers, viz. : boats propelled by steam and using the new otter 

 trawl, which could be worked by machinery, arrived in small numbers, and the 

 annual catch rose to 239,000 cwts. in 1900. From about that time steam- 

 trawlers have increased in dimensions and numbers to a total of 146, while 

 the sailing-vessels have gradually become reduced at the present day to three 

 smacks fitted with auxiliary motors, with some 13 small motor- vessels filling 

 in part of the gap in the inshore fishing left by the withdrawal of the larger 

 sailing-vessels. 



Last year (1935) the total landings of wet fish amounted to one-and-a-quarter 

 million cwts., chiefly at Fleetwood, whence about 36 per cent, was dispatched 

 to London, 9 per cent, to Manchester, 9 per cent, to Liverpool, 5 per cent, to 

 Birmingham, and the balance to the northern counties and more distant places. 

 Thus the Lancashire fisheries are now supplying far more fish than is demanded 

 in the immediate neighbourhood. This rapid expansion has been rendered 

 possible by general improvements for equipping fishing vessels, and the 

 development by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway Company of 

 facilities for expeditious landing and treatment of fish and its dispatch from 

 Fleetwood. The old timber pond was converted into a spacious and well- 

 equipped dock with three cranes of the cantilever type capable of delivering 

 50 tons of coal per hour, and recently two electric belt conveyors have been 

 erected, each having a capacity of 200 tons per hour, and four more are to be 

 provided. At the present time the trawlers consume some 400,000 tons of coal 

 annually, which is derived mostly from the Lancashire and Yorkshire coal- 

 fields. 



The modern trawler can nowadays discharge the catch directly on to the quay- 

 side, where it is sorted into boxes in the early morning hours, ready for 

 auctioning at 8-30 a.m. in the contiguous fish market. The general organisa- 

 tion is so efficient as to enable the frequent daily dispatch by rail of 500 tons 

 of fresh fish. For the preservation of fresh fish ice is consumed by the steam- 



