128 NEW SOUTH WALES 
CHAPTER X. 
The Fishing-grounds of New South Wales. 
Tur following facts with reference to our Fishing-grounds have been 
elicited by the evidence obtained by the Royal Commission of 1880, 
and were embodied in their report. They comprise all the information 
we have on the subject. 
The number, variety, and extent of the fishing-grounds with which 
the entire seaboard of the Colony has been endowed, all lying within a 
very moderate distance of Port Jackson, afford the strongest encourage- 
ment to the inhabitants of the whole Colony who may hope to see the 
markets supplied with fish in a manner andupon asystem consonant with 
the requirements of the community. In this Colony the fish most 
adapted for food purposes do not yet require to be searched for in large 
smacks or fishing-vessels, victualled and equipped for a cruise of several 
months ; neither is it necessary for our fishermen to make voyages to 
fishing-grounds distant hundreds of miles from home. Our best fish are 
very rarely met with more than 10 miles off the coast, or in deeper water 
than 35 fathoms. The schnapper, which for economic purposes may be 
ranked with the cod of the northern hemisphere, appears to be distri- 
buted with remarkable regularity along the whole extent of our sear 
board—that is to say, over about 600 miles; and whatever the for- 
mation or character of the coast may be, this fish, the most valuable of 
all our forms, and perhaps the most abundant, is never absent ; and 
being essentially a rock fish in its habits, is not migratory. And the 
same may be said of its congener—the bream ; and in a lesser degree of 
the flathead, whiting, black-fish, tailors, tarwhine, garfish, and other 
varieties which frequent the bays and estuaries of harbours and lakes, 
.rather than the ocean depths. Some of these fish are, no doubt, not to be 
found throughout the year in their usual haunts, but they may be 
treated for all practical purposes as regular inhabitants of our fishing 
grounds, 
The seaboard of this Colony is in a marked degree favourable to the 
existence of a very large supply of the best food fishes. It is indented 
by innumerable inlets and arms of the sea; it possesses many rivers 
whose embouchures are of large expanse ; some of its bays, harbours, and 
lakes are of vast extent, and its submarine conditions generally are of a 
a eminently adapted both as nursery and feeding-grounds for 
sh. 
Port Jackson, although not very many years ago holding a very high 
rank among our fishing-grounds for all kinds of the best net fish, is now 
scarcely regarded as a source of supply at all. And this is owing not so 
-much to the pollution of its waters by the sewage of a large city, or 
their constant disturbance by the traffic of innumerable vessels, as to the 
ceaseless and often wanton process of netting to which every bay and 
flat has been subjected for the past fifteen or twenty years. The whole- 
sale destruction within the harbour caused by stake nets and seines with 
meshes almost small enough for a naturalist’s hand-net has of course 
produced its natural effect on the outside grounds, where the schnapper 
