96 



MARINE AND FISHERIES 



6-7 EDWARD VII., A. 1907 



iruption, and are obliged to make a second division; the one takes to the western side, 

 and is scarcely perceived, being soon lost in the immensity of the Atlantic; but the 

 ^ther, which passes into the Irish sea, rejoices and feeds the inhabitants of most of 

 the coasts that border on it. These brigades, as we may call them, which are thus 

 separated from the greater columns, are often capricious in their motions, and do not 



show an invariable attachment to their haunts Though we have no 



particular authority for it, yet as very few young herrings are found in our seas dur- 

 ing winter, it seems almost certain that they must return to their parental haunts, 

 beneath the ice, to repair the vast destruction of their race during the summer by men, 

 fowl and fish. Some of the old herring continue on our coasts the whole year; the 

 Scarborough fishermen never put down their nets but they catch a few; but the num- 

 bers that remain are not worth mention in comparison to the numbers that return.' 



Dr. John Johnston, in his famous Historia Naturalis, De Piscibus et Cetis, lib. V., 

 Amsterdam, 1657, ventured to give a more detailed account of the herring migrations 

 off the British islands. His quaint Latin narrative may be thus rendered : ^ Wonderful 

 indeed are the particulars of the migrations of the herring. In former days they lin- 

 gered in Norwegian waters as their home; but in our time they swim all round Bri- 

 tain in immense armies. About midsummer they seek the Scottish shores from the 

 deeps, and they descend upon the English coast, being taken from Scarborough Castle 

 to the Thames from the middle of August. Afterwards some are carried by currents 

 into the English channel and there offer themselves to the fishermen until 'Christmas. 

 Thence they swim along both sides of Ireland to the north ocean, as if circumnavigat- 

 ing Britain, and then disappear until June. Later they return as soon as winter is 

 over.' 



It is due to Mr. John Cleghorn, of Wick, Scotland, that this marvellous story of 

 the herring's movements from northern waters was first discredited. In a paper read 

 before the British Association, at Liverpool, in 1854, he set forth the following consid- 

 erations unfavourable to the generally accepted theory: — 



(1) Herring remain within narrow limits as local races, distinct in size, quality, 

 time iof spawning, &c., and do not migrate over immense distances. (2) Increased 

 netting has not increased the total yield as compared with the previous twenty-five 

 years, owing to the depletion of the local schools. (3) Catches at particular stations 

 may be vastly increased; but the fish in restricted areas may be exterminated.* (4) On 

 extensive open shores herring survive in numbers longer than in circumscribed areas, 

 especially near large cities, where the fish always decline and disappear first. 



There is now a general consensus lof scientific opinion that all the important spe- 

 cies of food fishes are local in their distribution and migration, the herring being no 

 exception to this general rule. Not only are local varieties of herring distinguishable, 

 but even ion the same parts of a coast the herring schools have been separated ,into 

 littoral and deep-water varieties. Thus, in Norway, a shore herring has been recog- 

 nized, while a deep-water herring, which comes inshore at the spawning time only, has 

 been similarly distinguished. Such littoral and deep-water schools of other marine 

 creatures may exist, so that the fishermen of Nova Scotia who speak of the deep-water 

 lobsters are no doubt right in regarding them as distinct from those habitually haunt- 

 ing the areas close inshore. The herring, on most shores where attention has been 

 directed to the matter, appear to move off into open or deep water after spawning, the 

 schools which continue to linger near shore being small and unimportant. It is, indeed, 

 this existence of local schools of all kinds of fishes, which ensures most effectively the 

 continuance of the fisheries as a commercial resource. Were the herring of a sea, 

 like the North sea or German iocean, to move annually in one great body, it might be 

 possible by effective and vastly increased methods of destruction to imperil them with 



*ArQiongst the statements of the Royal Commission on Scottish Herring Fisheries, 1879, this 

 occurs: ' Either from the operations of man, or fron some other cause, the herrings have been 

 deterred from entering firths and sea-locks in the same numbers as formerly.' 



