IMPOVERISHMENT OF THE GROUNDS 259 



fined practically to a narrow coastal region, not 

 much exceeding, if at all, our present territorial 

 water margin. Then deep-sea fishing was prac- 

 tised, and about the beginning of the sixties the 

 greater part of the North Sea had been fished over. 

 In the interval under consideration fishing vessels 

 have gone much further afield. Every portion of 

 the North Sea has been fished ; not a foot of its 

 bottom, it has been said, has not felt the fisher- 

 man's sounding lead, trying for suitable trawling 

 ground. At the present day steam vessels go 

 round the Shetland Islands to the westward, as 

 far north as the coast of Iceland and the Fsroe 

 Islands, and as far south as the coasts of Portugal. 



5. The last and most significant change, or 

 rather want of change, affects the quantity of fish 

 landed. This has increased, of course ; but when 

 one remembers the enormous increase in the 

 machinery for capture represented by the great 

 extension of steam fishing, the rapid improvement 

 of steam and sailing vessels, the improvement in 

 fishing apparatus, such as the introduction of the 

 " otter " trawl, it is very surprising that the increase 

 in the quantity of fish caught should be so slight. 



The changes in the numbers and composition of 

 the fishing fleet are represented in the following 

 table : — ^ 



1 Rept. Sel. Comm., 1893, p. 378; Inspectors' Report (England and 

 Wales) for 1902, p. 9; Rept. Sel. Comm. Sea-Fisheries Bill {H.L.), 

 1904, p. 157. 



