THE AGE OF FISHES 199 



trawlers have gradually moved, over the past seventy-five years, 

 from grounds close to shore into the North Sea, from there to 

 the edge of the continental shelf beyond Ireland and Scot- 

 land, and even to the Icelandic waters and the waters around 

 Greenland and in the Barents Sea, in a continuous fight to 

 find fish in sufficient concentration to justify the cost of opera- 

 tion. It has been a vicious circle, for the fewer fish there are 

 near home, the more elaborate and expensive the gear needed 

 to operate efficiently and to compensate for the longer and 

 longer periods spent in travelling to and from distant fishing 

 grounds instead of in fishing. 



Perhaps because they are direct plankton feeders and closer 

 to the ultimate source of food, the herring stocks seem little 

 changed by the effects of fishing. This is not true of the car- 

 nivorous codfish and plaice. About 70% of all the plaice in the 

 North Sea have been caught, and both the average size of 

 plaice and cod and the catch of these fishes per day away from 

 port have dropped. 



The discovery of the Grand Banks was, as we shall see in 

 the Codfish Frontier, the start of a great new fishery. For a 

 long time this seemed inexhaustible, but there are signs now 

 that the inflexible laws of cause and effect apply to the fisheries 

 of the New World as they do to those of the North Sea. This 

 codfish frontier has provided a treasure more lasting than 

 the gold and silver of the Caribbean frontier, but one which 

 carries with it its own problems. The Ocean River is a self- 

 fertilizing pasturage that needs no ploughing and seeding, but 

 the harvest of fish must be gathered as a crop, with an eye to 

 the proper yield, and not as an ore to be mined as quickly 

 and completely as machinery and men can do it. We must 

 perforce conserve what we have, for the ocean is our last 

 frontier — there is no longer an unexploited New World 

 awaiting exploration and development across the River. 



