SELECT COMMIITEE ON THE SEA FISHERIES BILL. 



103 



11 March 1904] 



Mr. RoBEBT Henry Geice. 



Mr. ROBERT HENRY GRICE is calle^ in ; and Examined as follows :- 



Chaironan. 



1952. You are a practical fisherman yourself, 

 are you not ? — I am. 



1953. And are you the owner of a trawler ? — 

 No, I am the owner of a small open hoat. 



1954. You come from Sheringham, on the 

 coast of JN orfolk ? — Yes. 



1955. That is near Cromer ; — Yes. 



1956. Is there much destruction of small fish 

 by the trawlers ? — Yes. 



1957. Is there much value in these under- 

 sized, fish ? — No, there is very little value. I 

 might say I have been a fisherman for 40 years, 

 and my principal place of landing fish has been 

 from Lowestott to Scarborough for 35 successive 

 years, principally at Grimsby, and we have seen 

 fish that have been caught by our own brother 

 fishermen, boxes of them, sold at Is. 6d. per box; 

 we have taken the trouble to count them out, 

 and they run from '200 to 300 fish sold at Is. 6d. 

 Good marketable fish at the same time have 

 been fetching 21 and 21 10s. 



1958. The same weight ? — The same weight, 

 but not the same size. 



1959. Are these fish that are contained in_ a 

 box worth Is. 6d. large enough to be eaten ? — 

 No, they are only used for the purpose we have 

 heard a good deal about. 



1960. You mean fried fish ? — Yes, and on 

 di' erent occasions they will be used as bait. 



1961. Would there be any feeling created in 

 the minds of fishermen if under this Bill the 

 amount of bait they could obtain should be in 

 any way diminished ? — ^That has been the prin- 

 cipal opposition so far as practical longshore 

 fishermen are concerned. 



1962. Need you land the undersized fish to 

 get the bait ? — In some cases. I quite agree 

 with the provisions of the Bill except that of 

 landing. I can see a double-fold danger in the 

 word landing. All along the shores where these 

 small open boats and half-decked boats fish, 

 they get a considerable amount of these small 

 flat fish ; and in the dark, for instance at a time 

 when a sudden storm came up, the fisherman 

 would haul up his net, and in that net in the 

 night you would find perhaps a number of 

 small fish that had got into some part of the 

 net and would not be detected in the 

 hauling in at night ; and the danger I 

 see is that the police or bailiffs would 

 see in the net the next morning undersized fish. 

 Under the law that bailiff would be empowered 

 to prosecute such a person, when it is not in- 

 tentionally done. 



1963. But would he land these fish at one of 

 the large ports? — No, it would be along the 

 shore. 



1964. Then the Bill gives power to the Board 

 of Agriculture and Fisheries to designate the 



Chaimnan — continued. 



ports at which those fish shall not be landed. I 

 am not sure that I may go so far as to say that 

 there is no power in the Bill, but at any rate 

 there is no intention to prevent landing along 

 the shore, as you suggest. That is your only 

 objection, I understand ?— That is one objection. 

 Then in the big ports, where they get such 

 immense hauls, from 50 to 60 boxes in one haul, 

 it is a most difficult matter for any practical 

 fisherman to select every fish by the size limit. 



1965. But can you not judge pretty well from 

 the eye ? — You can judge, but in buying such a 

 number there is no practical fisherman that 

 could judge exactly. Now, we will take the 

 shell fish, for instance. We have a byelaw 

 passed by the Fishery Committee preventing the 

 landing oi lobsters under 8 inches. When you 

 are fishing for lobsters you do not know what 

 their lengths are until your fishing operations 

 are over, and then of course you go to measure 

 them. 



1966. Supposing you were prosecuted for 

 landing one undersized lobster by accident, do 

 you think that the magistrates would convict ? 

 — That has been the case some little time ago. 



1967. However, you think it is very desirable 

 that some steps should be taken to prevent the 

 landing of undersized flat fish ? — Yes. 



1968. And, of course, if you have power to 

 vary legislation, cases of hardship such as you 

 describe could be more easily dealt with than if 

 there was a hard-and-fast Act of Parliament, 

 and you had to go back to Parliament to alter it 

 in any way ? — Yes, that would be much better. 

 I did not know it gave that power. 



1969. You would prefer to be under a depart- 

 ment whose duty it would be to protect rather 

 than to harass the fishermen instead of being 

 under a hard-and-fast Act of Parliament, which 

 might be interpreted in different ways by the 

 magistrates before whom a case might be 

 brought ? — It would be much better. 



Lord Northhourne. 



1970. Who asked you to come here ? — I 

 received a letter from the Fishery Department, 

 I believe. 



1971. They invited you to attend?— Yes. I 

 have attended at these Fishery Conferences for 

 seven or eight years, and taken a deep interest 

 in the question, and possibly they might have 

 got my name from the Blue Book. 



1972. Do you represent anybody else besides 

 yourself? — I represent about 200 fishermen on 

 the Eastern Fishery Board, and it is an every- 

 day question. 



1973. Then you are a member of the Board ? 

 — Yes, I am a member of the Board. The 

 greatest opposition I might state is this, that 



foreigners 



