OUR FISHERIES 59 



being emptied of its fish life, and that the only conceivable 

 remedy is to impose a size limit of saleable plaice as high as 

 13 in. This, he thinks, would at least have the effect of 

 keeping the trawlers off the inshore grounds that yield only 

 the smaller classes of fish. Without such a measure to 

 accompany it, he considers that a close season, , such as has 

 from time to time been proposed, as ineflfectual. The extension 

 of the three-mile limit, within which trawling is already, 

 though in some parts only nominally, prohibited, he regards as 

 impracticable, chiefly on account of international complications. 

 As to artificial culture of sea fish, on which subject Mr. R. B. 

 Marston says something in Chapter XVI., Mr. Holt is clearly 

 of opinion that the practical difficulties outweigh the theoretical 

 advantages. The rearing of the fry through the surface- 

 swimming stages — a phrase that will be better understood on 

 reference to the short accounts that follow — is at least as 

 important as the hatching of the eggs ; and even if the fry 

 were reared to that point — a costly and difficult undertaking — 

 Mr. Holt thinks that it would also be necessary to legislate 

 for the protection of the young after turning them loose amid 

 the perils of the sea. Before making further reference to the 

 leading fishery questions of to-day, it seems desirable to 

 describe the different nets and lines in use on our coasts. 

 We must, in short, give our attention to the practice of our 

 fisheries before considering the ethics of their control. 



Two main principles are involved in the capture of sea 

 fish : either the fish are lured with a baited hook or into a 

 baited trap, or else they are bodily taken in a net, either 

 moving or stationary. Although, that is to say, netting and 

 hooking are widely separated modes of fishing, the crab-pot 

 (which incidentally takes many fish along with the crustaceans 

 for which it is ostensibly intended) is nearer in principle to the 

 hook and line than it is to the trammel or trawl. Between 

 netting and hooking there is an intermediate mode of fishing, 

 with the spear or grains. This must have developed from an 



