7 
TRAWLING EXPERIMENTS. 
During the past season the “Livingstone” was employed for 
the trawling experiments. The “Livingstone” is the steamer which 
was used for the earlier fishery work in Northumberland, and it 
was therefore possible to make the trial hauls with the appliances 
and with the methods which have for so many years been used. 
The writer has again to thank the Fishery Officers and the 
Laboratory Attendant for the help given in making the hauls and 
measuring the fish. 
In the last report it was pointed out that an attempt was made 
to standardise the stations by measuring the fish caught at a series 
of consecutive hauls. The results led to the conclusions (a) that 
the influence of the tide is demonstrated by the sueessive hauls, and 
(b) that even a short haul with a trawl having a given size of mouth 
(the conditions being met by a beam trawl) offered a fairly accurate 
quantitative and qualitative picture of each station at the time of 
the experiment. 
To take the latter point first. On September 27th, 1907, at 
Skate Roads the yield per hour just before and after ebb for five 
hours trawling, as will be seen by reference to table III. of the present 
report, was remarkably constant. Again on September 9th, 1908, 
at the same station, when the tide was in a similar condition the 
same features were met with, the numbers of the species and the 
total catches varying only to a small degree. The other experiments 
which were made last season and this on the same lines showed also 
that trawling for from an hour to two hours was sufficient to 
illustrate the conditions of the station at that particular time. 
They indicated also that at the inshore stations the factor of 
greatest importance in producing variation during a given day is 
the state of the tide. Most plaice are caught during the ebb and 
the early part of the flow. It is evident that they are captured as 
they retire from the shore with the retreat of the water. Dabs, too, 
increase in numbers during the ebb, and go on increasing during 
the flow. As in the case of the plaice, they are got in less numbers 
before and immediate after high tide. The same could be said of 
turbot and sole. The gurnard is mainly caught towards the end 
of the ebb, and again approaching and at high tide. 
