SEA-FISHERIES LABORATORY. 121 



due to migration out into deep water during the autumn 

 and early winter to a greater extent than to fishing-out. 

 Here again the trawl-mesh may, in my opinion, be either 

 6 inch or 7 inch — the smaller size can hardly be of serious 

 detriment to the general fisheries. 



Only these two parts of the Morecambe Bay area 

 have been sampled, but obviously the shallow channels 

 higher up : near Morecambe, for instance, and towards 

 Ulverston and Grange, on the Northern side, deserve 

 attention. There are typical small-fish grounds on both 

 sides — shrimping areas which constitute " nurseries/' and 

 a certain amount of trawling by second-class boats is 

 carried on. There is also a good deal of stake-netting, 

 and statistics of the sizes of plaice and soles caught would 

 be desirable. It should be remembered that stake netting 

 is a very considerable industry in this part of Lancashire 

 and that large quantities of plaice caught in this manner 

 are sent to the markets.* 



Nelson Buoy Grounds. 



There is often a considerable amount of trawling on 



the grounds off Nelson Buoy during the summer and 



autumn, and the plaice taken are mostly rather small fish. 



They do not appear (from the sample hauls recorded) to 



have been so abundant in 1909 as in some former years. 



The catches quoted in the tables do not show the same 



series of changes as in the cases of the Fleetwood and 



Barrow Channel grounds. We have to deal here with a 



plaice population migrating out from the nurseries in the 



estuary of the Kibble and inhabiting for some months the 



grounds lying between the Morecambe Bay and the 



Liverpool North- West Lightships and the Nelson Buoy. 



This plaice population becomes reduced during the 



* A. Scott, 13th Quarterly Rept., Scientific Work, Lancashire Sea- 

 Fish. Committee, Oct., 1909, p. 10. 



