sea-fisheries laboratory. 207 



Description of the Skears. 



The mussel beds at Morecambe are locally known as 

 " skears," a term which is also applied to any rough 

 ground, and each has a particular name amongst the fisher- 

 men. A few of the beds are situated in front of the town 

 itself, but the most extensive and most valuable are those at 

 the top of Heysham Lake. The latter present, at low water 

 of a spring tide, an almost unbroken line, over two miles 

 in length, and are in the form of a tongue-shaped pro- 

 jection extending from the shore in front of the Grosvenor 

 Hotel, very nearly due West into Grange Channel. At 

 the shore end the beds are nearly half a mile wide, but 

 gradually taper off as they reach the deep water. This 

 extensive bank is divided in the centre by two narrow 

 passages that never ebb dry. The floor of the beds in 

 general is hard ground which has become covered in 

 many places by the tubes of the " knaar "-forming worm, 

 Sabellaria alveolata. After a " strike " of mussels takes 

 place mud accumulates and in time the mussels appear 

 to be growing on the top of a mud bank. When the 

 mussels have been removed during a fisherjr, or by the 

 action of storms, the hard ground is exposed again. At 

 high water the whole of the beds is covered to a depth of 

 many feet, and they can then only be fished with the long 

 " craam," and this instrument has to be worked from a 

 boat. The handle or shaft of the long craam is some- 

 times between thirty and forty feet in length. 



The accompanying chart* shows the skears and gives 

 the name of each one. We are much indebted to Mr. 

 Edward Gardner, the honorary bailiff at Morecambe, for 

 information relating to the mussels, which has been of 

 much assistance to us, and to several of the fishermen who 



*The chart has been carefully copied from the rough draft, and is 

 the work of Mr. Johnstone. 



