42 BRITISH FISHERIES 



tion, a number of other areas,^ lyii^g outside the 

 true territorial waters, were also closed. The same 

 enactment also gave them power to close the whole 

 of the area lying within a straight line drawn from 

 Duncansby Head in Caithness to Rattray Head 

 in Aberdeenshire, that is, the whole of the Moray 

 Firth ; and in 1890 a large portion of this area 

 was closed. Finally, in 1891, the Board took full 

 advantage of the powers enjoyed by them, and 

 included the whole of the Moray Firth in their 

 list of closed waters. Their policy had again 

 changed somewhat, and the further reason assigned 

 for the closure of these offshore grounds was that 

 it was necessary to secure the protection of the 

 immature fish spawned there and inhabiting the 

 banks in the area. The capture and destruction 

 of these immature fishes, they held — and this 

 opinion had come to be commonly believed in — 

 was the chief cause of the diminution in the fish- 

 supply ; and this measure was adopted in the 

 interests of the preservation of the latter. 



These by-laws naturally gave rise to much 

 dissatisfaction on the part of the trawling popula- 

 tion. It is to be remembered that they operated 

 very unequally on different nationalities. Thus 

 the foreign trawler was at perfect liberty to fish in 

 the offshore waters of the Moray Firth and the 

 Firth of Clyde, which, though still outside the 

 territorial limits, were closed to British fishermen. 



1 Defined in the Schedule to the Act 



