of the Fishery Board for Scotland. 
179 
IV. THE CAPTURE OF IMMATURE FISH BY VARIOUS MODES 
OF FISHING. 
The chief modes of fishing with which the capture and destruction of 
immature sea fishes have been associated are beam or otter trawling, 
shrimp fishing, seine-net fishing, stow-net or bag-net fishing, and the 
fishing with kettle-nets and weir-nets It has also been stated that line 
fishermen land large quantities of immature fish. 
I. Beam-Trawling. 
The complaint that this mode of fishing destroys vast quantities of im- 
mature fish is of old standing, and most of the legislative enactments 
which have been passed on the subject have been directed against it. In 
the Report of the Commissioners in 1866, already referred to, it is stated that 
they are satisfied that while ' trawling in the open sea involves the capture 
'of a certain very variable proportion of immature fish,' it was not ' waste- 
' fully destructive.' Nothing definite is said as to their capture in bays 
and estuaries, except that 'there is reason to think that, in bays, the 
trawl brings up a larger proportion of small fish than when used in the 
open sea.' The first scientific inquiry on the subject was made by Professor 
M'Intosh in connection with the Trawling Commission of 1884. A full 
account of his investigations is given in Appendix A of the Commissioners' 
Report. 
The general conclusions arrived at by Professor M'Intosh were that the 
trawlers did not kill a very large proportion of immature fish, and that 
what they did kill was mainly the common dab and the long rough dab ; 
and that line fishermen killed a larger number of immature round fish 
than did the trawlers. 
I have analysed the results obtained by the ' Garland ' while carrying 
on the trawling experiments, but the number of immature fish obtained 
by it is probably greater in proportion than would be obtained by an ordi- 
nary large trawler, from the fact that the net used has a smaller mesh. 
The ordinary net of the ' Garland ' is 51 feet long, and it is attached to a 25 
feet beam. The largest meshes are 3 inches from knot to knot, and the 
smallest 1 \ inches in the cod end. The size of the mesh in the net used by 
steam trawlers varies. In those made use of in Professor M'Intosh's 
inquiry, the mesh towards the beam was 2^ or 3 inches from knot to knot, 
and 1J at the cod end. In recent years the mesh has been enlarged. On 
the East coast of Scotland it is usually from 6 inches on the square to 3| 
at the cod end. I am informed by Mr A. W. Maconochie that the 
meshes run from 4 inches down to 1 J inches at Lowestoft ; and that the 
Grimsby smacks, which fish in the more distant parts of the North Sea, 
use nets with meshes from 6 inches down to 3 inches at the cod end ; 
while the smaller class of vessels use a mesh of from 5J to 2J inches. 
In 1889 the ordinary net of the ' Garland' was shot above 150 times at 
the trawling stations in the Firth of Forth and St Andrews Bay. The 
total number of plaice, lemon sole, dabs, haddock, cod, &c, obtained was 
20,254, of which 13,837 were of adult size and 6417 were immature. Of 
the total, 14,684 were flat-fish and 5570 round fish. Of the flat-fish, 9801 
were of adult size and 4883 immature ; that is to say, among flat-fishes one 
immature specimen was captured for every two adults. Of the round fish, 
4036 were adult and 1534 immature j or, in other words, about two im- 
mature round fishes were captured for every five adults. These results are 
shown in the following Table : — 
