160 NEW SOUTH WALES 
CHAPTER XIV. 
Fishery Laws and Regulations. 
A Birt “to provide for. the development and regulation of the 
Fisheries of the Colony” as introduced by Sir Henry Parkes on the 
13th January, 1881, in the Legislative Assembly, and of which the 
present Act is the outcome, was founded, in its most important principles, 
upon the Report of the Royal Commission on the Fisheries, dated the 
3rd May, 1880 ; and, in respect of the Oyster Fisheries, the Bill adopted 
such recommendations of the Oyster Culture Commission contained in 
their report dated the 3rd May, 1877, as appeared to fall within the 
scope of the new system of administration which it was proposed to 
establish. 
Some details of the Bill as introduced were modified in Committee, 
both in the Assembly and in the Council, and it was found advisable, in 
Committee, to incorporate an entirely new series of special clauses dealing 
with proprietary or private fisheries. These now form Part III of the 
Act as passed. 
To understand the system of regulations introduced by this Act the 
short and admirable compendium of Mr. Alexander Oliver (one of the 
Commissioners of Fisheries), is placed before the reader. He says* :— 
The sea-fisheries on the coasts and in the seas of Northern Europe (in- 
cluding in that expression Great Britain) are concerned chiefly with 
the capture of cod, herrings, mackerel, whiting, ling, haddock, and the 
flat fish, such as turbot, brill, soles, &c. the American, or rather the 
United States sea-fisheries are for cod, mackerel, menhaden (a species of 
herring), halibut, and haddock. Now, with the exception of the herring, 
which is known to spawn in firths and other inlets of the sea (for white- 
bait caught at the mouth of the Thames is now known to be the fry of 
the ordinary herring), all the other marine fishes here mentioned either 
spawn on banks away from the foreshores, and sometimes hundreds of 
miles distant from land, or else in places almost wholly inaccessible to 
drift-nets, seines, or trawls. Nets and trawls are therefore almost 
wholly incapable of destroying the young fry in the European seas ; and 
on the American coast the purse-seines, by which the mackerel and 
menhaden are caught, are quite innocent of any similar mischief. Of 
course the baited lines by which cod, haddock, whiting, and halibut are 
caught, whether in European or American seas, can do no harm either 
to spawn or youg fry. Why, then, should there be any statutory pro- 
tection of these fish from legitimate capture, even if such protection 
were practicable ? 
In this Colony, however, the conditions are quite different. The most 
valuable of our fishes are those which are most abundant and most 
easily captured. Of these the sea mullet, schnapper, the breams, the 
gar-fish, the black-fish, and whiting may be mentioned as the most 
important in an economic point of view ; and all these fish either always 
spawn in quiet waters at the head of salt-water inlets and in lagoons, or 
* The Fisheries Act of 1881, &c., with an Introduction, Summary, and Index, 
by Alexander Oliver. Sydney, 1881, Government Printing Office. 
