SEA-FISHERIES LABORATORY. 243 



have had to go further afield, spent more money, and caught 

 less fish. (For that, Ave may take it, is why they fished where 

 they did.) But the year after, or the year after that again, 

 they might have caught the small fish (which they had refrained 

 from catching in Liverpool Bay in 1920) when these fish had 

 grown to be much bigger. Now, knowing all this, would the 

 skippers have voluntarily consented not to exploit the small fish 

 grounds ? Would the legislator who suggests the restrictions 

 on sizes have done so had he not been a legislator, but the 

 owner of the steam trawlers ? If not, then, it is certainly very 

 unfair to advocate restrictions on the inshore fishermen that 

 have the same objects and are enforceable only by making 

 them penal offences. 



Cultivation. 



It is because of the difficulties suggested in this section of 

 the report that cultivation seems to be a much more promising 

 field for research and application than are legislative restrictions 

 and prohibitions. We do not refer here to the artificial 

 hatching and rearing of plaice because that is still a matter of 

 polemics. But the now well-known suggestions of Captain 

 Douglas and the experimental proof of these by the trans- 

 plantations carried out by the Marine Biological Association 

 on the Dogger Bank certainly open out a broad track along 

 which cultivation methods may develop. This does seem to 

 be the line which scientific and practical fishery work will 

 follow if and when it becomes clear that the productivity of 

 the fishing grounds is diminishing under the reign of laissez- 

 faire, as established by the strictly modern steam-fishing 

 industry. 



