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and Grenaa, these figures would have turned out not a little different for 

 the latest years. 



The way of fishing has of late years been changed from fishing 

 with gill-nets to fishing with seines (plaice seines, Dan. »Snurrevaad«), which 

 are drawn by means of long lines (one on each arm of the seine), and gene- 

 rally by means of a steam-winch ; in so doing they have given up an older , 

 troublesome way of fishing for a later and intensive one, so that I dare say 

 the fishing-power in these years has been doubled 20 — 30, nay perhaps 1 00 times. 



If we took the lines from all the plaice-seines which are now in use, and 

 tied them together into one long line, this would reach more than double the 

 length of the Cattegat, the lines in use being often 600 fths. long on each arm 

 of the seine. In other words, if there were nothing else to prevent it, one 

 might take almost the whole Cattegat in one haul of the seine. And now 

 ever) r cutter makes not one but many hundred hauls in every fishing-season. 

 Is it any wonder then that the result of such a fishing is a perceptible diminu- 

 tion in the number of the fish which can be caught in the seine? These 

 are almost exclusively fiat-fishes; the seine is made on purpose of these, 

 and it catches them splendidly. Other fishes, as cod or haddock, not to men- 

 tion herrings, etc., are seldom if ever caught in these seines in greater 

 numbers. 



While 15 years ago plaice-fishery was carried on only at a few of the 

 shallowest places on the shores, and at the islands in the Cattegat, it is now 

 carried on everywhere, where there are plaice in this sea, and where the 

 condition of the bottom (stones or the like) does not prevent it. The places 

 where the bottom does not permit this fishery, lie however like little islands 

 only among those which are fit for use, and the fishermen know how to ap- 

 proach so near to these islands that every plaice which ventures outside the 

 stone banks is very much exposed to being caught. 



In our smaller seas, with the exception of the Limfjord, which is the 

 real home of this seine, the plaice-seine has not thrived very well on account 

 of the roughness of the bottom (stones and vegetation); but here again the 

 plaice are not so common and valuable, and the areas are not so large, that 

 the earlier fishing-gear (gill-nets) could not catch what was necessary; finally, 

 many of these little seas do not contain, perhaps, a stock, of plaice properly so 

 called, independent of the Cattegat, so that the destruction in this sea, per- 

 haps, has reacted on the other seas; the stock, however, has scarcely suffered 

 so much here as in the Cattegat. (See ante p. 35 — 36.) 



