22 man's influence on food-fishes. 



have been eagerly followed by generation after generation of 

 men belonging to every nation bordering on the sea. Yet 

 after all these thousands of years can it be said that there are 

 evident signs of the extinction of any modern marine fish ? 



It has been shown how easy it is to affect the numbers of 

 the larger land-animals, the oceanic mammals and fresh-water 

 fishes, by extensive and long-continued attacks. The problem 

 of the marine food-fishes, however, is less easily solved. The 

 majority of these produce a vast number of minute pelagic 

 eggs, and thus even before the larvae are born the species is 

 disseminated throughout a great area, it may be, so far as 

 fishing is concerned, of untouched ocean \ There is no definite 

 limit, for instance, on either side of the Atlantic beyond which 

 we can say this or that fish does not go. On the contrary, a 

 vast reserve of water more or less unfished by man is always 

 present in the larger seas, and as these are but parts of one 

 great whole which covers three -fourths of the earth's surface, 

 the extermination of any form by man is rendered difficult, — 

 nearly as difficult as if nature had provided insects with aerial 

 eggs, and man had endeavoured to annihilate them. 

 V At first sight it seems almost incredible that such species as 

 the cod, haddock, whiting, plaice, and sole could withstand the 

 vast annual drain caused by the operations of the fishermen of 

 various nations. Yet at this moment all these species in the 

 open seas present as wide a distribution, and, in some, as little 

 diminution in numbers as if the constant persecution of man 

 had not been. Nor must we confine our attention to the 

 ravages of man alone. Whales, seals, sea-birds^, sharks, dog- 

 fishes, skate, their own and other species of bony fishes, and in 

 their young stages many invertebrates, continually prey on 

 them and have preyed on them for ages. The yearly consump- 

 tion by the foregoing diverse forms represents an enormous 

 sacrifice of the food-fishes. These and other natural checks 

 are beyond the influence of man, and probably at no period 

 were less powerful than they are now. Man's interference is 



1 Sir J. Murray thinks cooling of the surface destroyed forms having pelagic 

 larvEe, but his grounds are open to doubt. 



2 E.g. penguins, gannets, cormorants, guillemots, puffins, gulls, terns, &c. 



