4 
as a rule do not complain of the scarcity of the fish. With the 
improved boats and gear at their command, they are able to go 
great distances, and from place to place if necessary, until they get 
a “voyage” worth bringing into market. It is the line fishermen, 
compelled to more restricted work from their smaller boats, and the 
use of apparatus which is not subject to much improvement, nor is 
or ever will be capable of gaining immense catches, who find most 
reason to grumble. They have seen how easily they can eradicate 
mussel beds, and seriously reduce the crab and lobster fisheries. 
They find that not only is the steam trawler with his immense 
catches a serious competitor in the market, but at sea there are 
signs that the near fishing grounds are not yielding them the catches 
they used to get, that, in fact, the ordinary fisheries are being 
reduced likewise. It was said at first that the trawlers were the 
cause of this presumed reduction by destroying the ova, the young 
and the food of the fishes, and it was confidently hoped that the 
closing of the in-shore waters to trawlers would reserve and protect 
the fish from such destruction, besides providing ample fishing for 
the line fishermen. But the fact to which 1 have in previous reports 
drawn your attention is that such a distinct increase has not 
occurred, neither here nor in Scotland, where much more elaborate 
and similar experiments have been made. This being the case, and 
as, moreover, trawling has been proved to be much less destructive 
in these respects than was supposed, we are compelled to say, 
with the advisers of the Scottish Fishery Board, that it is because 
there is a general over-fishing. The numbers are not surprisingly 
different year after year, and it is therefore possible that we have 
reached a limit, below which over-fishing cannot iniiuence at least 
the in-sliore fisheries so very much. Nevertheless, we can easily 
imagine at the time, not so long ago, when the North Sea as a 
whole was not fished to any large extent, that these bays and the 
in-sliore waters would participate in the general richness, that now 
the smallness of the numbers obtained in one area is but expressive 
of the. condition of the whole. 
With these observations I now beg to draw your attention to 
this year’s results. 
