120 Extract from Report on the Acts relatiny to 
of herring, by scaring the shoals of fish; that immature 
fish were captured by it; that the spawn beds were 
injured ; that the fish caught by the seine were unfit for 
curing; and that the seiners or ‘trawlers’ injured the 
fishing-gear of the drift-net men. 
12. The main question involved in these allegations is the 
following: Is it an ascertained fact that the system of 
trawling has injured the fishery of Loch Fyne and its | 
neighbourhood ? 
13. Our inquiries satisfy us that the fishery of Loch Fyne has 
suffered no diminution by the operations of the trawlers, 
but that, on the contrary, it is a steadily progressive 
fishery, when the periods of comparison are made suffi- 
ciently long to correct the annual fluctuations, which are 
always considerable in this as in all other herring fisheries. 
The approximate gross take of herring in Loch Fyne, 
according to the returns of the Baker Board, are as 
follows :— 
General annual average take from 1833 to 1843, 18,994 barrels. 
” ” ” 1844 to 1848, 15 427 
oe) ” ain 1849 to 1859, 19 ,149 
on a i 1854 to 1858, 25,744 
we 3 ¥ 1859 to 1862, 42,165 
> 
9 
>? 
33 
14. This steady increase of the fishery, during the period when 
trawling was practised, cannot be ascribed to an augmenta- 
tion in the number of drift-net boats; for these, on an ave- 
rage of the same years, with the exception of 1862, show 
no increase, while the square yards of netting employed re- 
main also comparatively stationary. Hence we are forced 
to the conclusion, that there have been no grounds for 
the alarm that the fishery of Loch Fyne was being de- 
stroyed by the operations of the trawlers, 
14. This result established for Loch Fyne is found to apply 
to the west coast of Scotland as a whole—viz., that there 
is a steady increase in the fishery during the periods 
when trawling was prosecuted, and since it has been 
abandoned, | 
15, The selected years of bad fishing, brought as proofs that 
trawling was destroying the fishery, have, when examined, 
no application to the question, as an equal number of 
years of quite as bad fishing are found in every decen- 
nial period before the system of trawling had been dis- 
covered. 
16. The selection of the prosperous year of fishing, 1862, is 
equally fallacious as bearing on the question. It is only 
