42 THE SEA FISHERIES 



The Irish Sea area is much smaller than the preceding, and contains 

 only 15,700 sq. miles. It is bounded by lines drawn across the 

 St. George's and North Channels. This is one of the few remaining 

 areas where a fair proportion of the fish is still landed by sailing 

 trawlers, though the statistics prove that even here saU is being 

 gradually superseded by steam. The predominant species are cod, 

 skates, rays and plaice, though haddock, turbot and halibut occur 

 sparely. The really important fish for the inshore fishermen are 

 the sole and plaice. In the Irish Sea the only method of steam 

 fishing is trawling (with negligible exceptions). The deep-sea 

 sailing fisheries are carried on by ketch-rigged smacks which come 

 under the official designation of first-class fishing vessels. There 

 are four fleets which fish this area regularly, namely the smacks 

 of Hoylake (registered at Liverpool), Fleetwood, Douglas and 

 Bjixham. The crew of these boats consists of four men or three 

 men and a boy, though in summer they put to sea with a crew of 

 three men only. These men come into direct competition with the 

 steamers, and in many instances are handicapped in the struggle 

 for existence. The extension of steam fishing, without any question, 

 tends to eliminate the deep-sea smack, and certain of our best 

 types of fishermen are driven into the ranks of casual labour ashore 

 to the manifest detriment not only of themselves, but of the com- 

 munity as a whole. In the Irish Sea there is also a comparatively 

 large amount of inshore trawling, principally for plaice. This 

 fishing is carried on by small second-class boats, locally known as 

 " Nobbies " ; half-decked cutter-rigged craft of about 10 tons 

 gross register with a crew of two men. They carry a trawl with a 

 beam of 25 ft., and fish in shallow water near the shore. This class 

 of fisherman does not come into competition, at least to any appre- 

 ciable extent, with the other trawlers, and probably has little to 

 fear from them, since these little boats have the shrimping or prawn- 

 ing to fall back on. Moreover, steam trawling is illegal in the local 

 territorial waters. 



The extent to which steam trawling has developed in the Irish 

 Sea in recent years is shown by the following extracts from the 

 official statistics. 



The first table relates to soles, as that is the most important fish 

 to the smacksman. In 1906 only 4-86 per cent of the soles landed in 

 England and Wales came from the Irish Sea, and during that year 

 the average catch of soles per day's absence from port was 0-07 cwt. 

 in the case of a steam trawler and 0-24 in the case of a smack. The 

 number of separate landings of catches of fish from the Irish Sea 

 was for the steamers 174 and for the smacks 1511. 



In 1913 no less than 22-13 per cent of the total weight of soles 



