SCIENTIFIC WORK IN THE SEA-FISHERIES. 211 



more rational views of the fisheries. No bay, for instance, is 

 better known to men of science than St. Andrews Bay, which 

 has been fished from time immemorial. It is probably about 

 one hundred years since an elementary kind of trawl was used 

 in its waters, and more than forty years since a fleet of local 

 sailing trawlers swept it more or less every year. Moreover, ten or 

 twelve steam trawlers also worked it for some years — before the 

 closure for the scientific experiments of the ' Garland ' in 1886 — 

 when it was said to be "trawled out." Yet, on the cessation of 

 trawling, there was no lack of fishes, and especially of flat-fishes. 

 Further, it is a remarkable fact that the fleet of local sailing 

 trawlers worked, weather permitting, invariably in the same 

 line, by well-known land-marks ; thus for more than thirty 

 years setting at naught the fears of those who make a nightmare 

 of " trawling out," and of "barren areas " of the sea. Such, in- 

 deed, might have been expected from the longer and more con- 

 tinuous experience at Brixham. 



Notwithstanding the lamentable accounts of the condition of 

 St. Andrews Bay as shown in the evidence before Lord Dal- 

 housie's Commission in 1883, its fishes, scientifically examined in 

 1884, were very much as they are at this moment. Careful 

 observations since that date have demonstrated that in their 

 season, and by the use of anemones for bait, and then of gill- 

 nets, Cod (said to be so rare) can be caught in hundreds by a 

 single boat ; that for a space of two years at a time (1905-1906) 

 enormous numbers of saleable Haddocks may swarm in the bay, 

 unaffected by the busy steam trawlers outside the limits ; that 

 the larger Thornbacks (a kind of Skate) are and have always 

 been plentiful, and of the same size ; and that much that has 

 been said about the diminished size of the perennial Plaice 

 needs modification, for in such a shallow sandy bay few mature 

 fishes normally occur, only multitudes of young forms, which as 

 they increase in size pass outwards to the deeper water — as of 

 old. Further, the gill-nets demonstrated not only the abund- 

 ance of food-fishes, but of numerous large Sharks (Porbeagle, 

 nine feet), and many Porpoises, which would otherwise have 

 been unknown, and every one of which levied daily contributions 

 from the food-fishes. 



All this plenitude has been retained, though the number of 



