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seek just the same places as the shrimp, viz. the clean sand deposits 

 on shallow water. Prohibitions against this fishery plays a great part in the 

 propositions set forth by scientific men in England to promote the flat-fish 

 fishery, and, certainly, justly so. 



In our seas this fishery is not known, so to speak, at any rate not 

 in the same form. Ammodytes-seims and eel-handseines in the western parts 

 of the Limfjord are those of our fisheries which get nearest to the English 

 shrimp-trawl with regard to the great quantities they take of unsaleable 

 flat-fishes. A few other sorts of fishing-tackle for bait, as »Ulken« in 

 the Sound, are perhaps not quite innocent neither; but with the exception 

 of the Limfjord I do not think much will be won for the plaice by prohibi- 

 tions against these, and much will be lost in other directions. — 



In order to promote the plaice-fishery, in our seas at any rate, it is 

 not enough to protect the unsaleable fish only; we must also, and particu- 

 larly, protect the saleable fish so that the latter becomes sufficiently saleable. 

 I am convinced that no other way will lead us to the goal: the greatest 

 possible profit. — 



When we want to protect the plaice in our seas, it may be done in two 

 ways : 1) we might demand a certain minimum size of the meshes in all sorts 

 of fishing-gear employed in plaice fishery; 2) we might make it compulsory 

 on the fishermen to throw all plaice that were caught under a certain size 

 into the sea, permitting them on the other hand to fish with meshes of 

 whichever size they wanted. (Regulation as to fishes under a certain official 

 sise limit.) 



The former method would meet man}', as a rule insurmountable, prac- 

 tical difficulties; the latter would meet some, I believe surmountable hin- 

 drances. I shall enter somewhat closer into this question. 



Let us imagine that a mesh of 6 inches, i. e. one whose 4 sides were 

 each 3 inches long, in plaice-seines would be suitable for the protection of 

 the plaice we wanted to protect, then the difficult}' would immediately oc- 

 cur that the fishermen scarcely would or could live by fishing plaice with 

 such a seine in the first six or twelve months, or perhaps only in a few 

 months ; they would then take a sole-seine with such small meshes as they 

 thought fit, and fish plaice — and perhaps a few soles — with that. 



If we would try to prevent such an evasion of the law by forbidding, 

 for instance, the use of the sole-seine except in certain months of the year, 

 we should either be obliged to extend these months over a great part of 

 the year, or run the risk of losing a great part of the solefishery. And 



