VI 



Effect of creels. Over -fishing has, indeed, been stimulated during the last few 

 years by the invention of a much more efficacious mode of 

 catching crabs and lobsters. 30 years ago, the fishermen in many 

 places were accustomed to fish with " rings " alone. They now 

 almost universally use " creels." The ring was an iron ring with 

 a small net attached to it in the shape of a purse. The ring 

 was baited and let down to the bottom of the sea. The fisherman 

 constantly examined the ring to see if there were any fish on 

 it 3 and the pressure of the water on the ring, while it was being 

 drawn up for examination, prevented any lobsters or crabs which 

 happened to have been attracted by the bait, from escaping. 

 The ring, therefore, required the constant attention of the fisher- 

 men, and a boat could not use more rings than the fishermen 

 connected with it could constantly examine. A creel, on the 

 contrary, is a pot made of wickerwork or of a wicker frame 

 covered with netting. The crabs and lobsters enter it through 

 a hole or pipe 4 J to 5 inches in diameter and are found in 

 it when the pots are examined. The creel, therefore, is a fixed 

 engine, unattended by the fishermen and only periodically 

 examined, usually towards dawn, by its owner. The substitu- 

 tion, therefore, of creels for rings enabled each fisherman to work 

 more traps than he could before, with very much less labour 

 to himself, and also to work them in much deeper water. 

 It replaced a comparatively inefficient engine with a much more 

 efficient one. 



The increase of fishing, which we have thus noticed, and 

 which has led to the introduction of more efficient means of 

 capture, has been of course stimulated by the increased facilities 

 of transit, which railways and steamboats have of late years 

 afforded. 



We have thus summarised the evidence which we have re- 

 ceived relative to the increase or decrease of the crab and 

 lobster fisheries of Scotland ; and we have stated the causes to 

 which the witnesses were agreed in attributing the decrease. 

 The remedies which they suggested were the institution of a 

 close season and the fixing of a gauge. 

 Close season I n the case °f cr &bs, nearly 30 witnesses advocate the combina- 



and gauge. tion of a close season and a gauge, whilst only seven are opposed 

 to a close time, and only four to a gauge. 45 witnesses are in 

 favour of the union of a close time and gauge for lobsters, and 

 only five object to a close time.* 



A close time alone would prevent the capture of the fish when 

 they are out of condition, but it would do nothing to prevent the 



* The reason that so many more witnesses are found supporting the combination of 

 a close time and a gauge in the case of lobsters than in the case of crabs is, that, all 

 around the coasts and among the islands, evidence was given about lobsters, whereas 

 the lobster fishermen in the western islands only take crabs by accident ; there is 

 no market for them and scarcely any local consumption, except at Oban during the 

 tourist season ; so that many of these witnesses declined to give evidence respecting 

 the crab fisheries because they had no special interest in or knowledge of them. 



