A FISH AUCTION IN NORTPI^RN FRANCE: FISHING BOATS NOW SWEFP THE SFAS FOR 

 MINES INSTEAD OF SEINING IT FOR FISH 



EUROPE'S ENDANGERED FISH SUPPLY: THE 

 WAR AND THE NORTH SEA FISHERIES 



WITH its war zones and counter 

 war zones, its mined areas, its 

 hostile fleets, and its heavily 

 defended shores, the North Sea, in a few 

 months, has been transformed from one 

 of the richest food-producing areas in 

 Christendom into a region upon whose 

 mastery may depend the starvation of 

 one or the other of two of the mightiest 

 nations of the earth. 



In times of peace no other like area in 

 all the seas ever has given to humanity 

 such rich supplies of food as this narrow 

 strait separating Albion from the conti- 

 nent of Europe. More than in any other 

 known region of the oceans, the food 

 fishes of the marine world seem to love 

 to congregate there, and to feel that it is 

 home to them in spite of an age-long 

 attack upon them by the greatest of all 

 creatures of prey — man. 



MIEEIONS OF TONS OF FISH 



Step by step every new idea of art and 

 ^, science has been brought to the aid of the 

 fisherfolk of the North Sea, and by the 

 same step-by-step process the annual 

 drain on its resources has climbed higher 

 and higher, until finally, during the year 

 previous to the present war, it amounted 

 to a million and a quarter tons of fish. 

 Counting two tons to the truck-load and 

 allowing 30 feet to the truck, this would 

 make a procession of fish trucks reach- 

 ing across the United States from New 

 York to San Francisco via New Orleans. 



Yet almost as rapidly as the demands 

 of the world have risen, the supply has 

 increased, and, except for a too heavy 

 concentration of fishing forces on some 

 individual bank now and then, there is 

 no evidence of any serious depletion of 

 the stock. 



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