Are there more Fish in the Sea than ever came out of it?—Modern Writers on the Fisheries—Were Fish ever so abundant as is said?—Salmon-Poaching—Value of Salmon—Sea-Fish—Destruction of the Young—Is the demand for Fish beginning to exceed the Supply?—Evils of Exaggeration—Fish quite Local—Incongruity of Protecting one Fish and not another—Difficulties in the way of a Close-Time—Duties of the Board of White-Fisheries—Regulation of Salmon Rivers—Justice to Upper Proprietors—The one Object of the Fishermen—Conclusion.

The idea of a slowly but surely diminishing supply of fish is no doubt alarming, for the public have hitherto believed so devoutly in the frequently-quoted proverb of “more fish in the sea than ever came out of it,” that it has never, except by a discerning few, been thought possible to overfish; and, consequently, while endeavouring to supply the constantly-increasing demand, it has never sufficiently been brought home to the public mind that it is possible to reduce the breeding stock of our best kinds of sea-fish to such an extent as may render it difficult to repopulate those exhausted ocean colonies which in years gone by yielded, as we have been often told, such miraculous draughts. It is worthy of being noticed that most of our public writers who venture to treat the subject of the fisheries proceed at once to argue that the supply of fish is unlimited, and that the sea is a gigantic fish-preserve into which man requires but to dip his net to obtain at all times an enormous amount of wholesome and nutritious food.

This style of writing on the fisheries comes largely into use whenever there is a project of a joint-stock fishing company placed before the public. When that is the case obscure little villages are pointed to as the future seats of enormous prosperity, just because they happen to be thought of by some enterprising speculator as the nucleus of a fishing town; and we are straightway told that Buckhorn or Kirksalt, or some equally obscure place, could be made to rival those towns in Holland whose wealth and prosperity originated in even smaller beginnings. We are likewise informed, on the occasions of giving publicity to such speculations, that “the sea is a liquid mine of boundless wealth, and that thousands of pounds might be earned by simply stretching forth our hands and pulling out the fish that have scarcely room to live in the teeming waters of Great Britain,” etc. etc. I would be glad to believe in these general statements regarding our food fisheries, were I not convinced, from personal inquiry, that they are a mere coinage of the brain. There are doubtless plenty of fish still in the sea, but the trouble of capturing them increases daily, and the instruments of capture have to be yearly augmented, indicating but too clearly to all who have studied the subject that we are beginning to overfish. We already know, in the case of the salmon, that the greed of man, when thoroughly excited, can extirpate, for mere immediate gain, any animal, however prolific it may be. Some of the British game birds have so narrowly escaped destruction that their existence, in anything like quantity, when set against the armies of sportsmen who seek their annihilation, is wonderful.

The salmon has just had a very narrow escape from extermination. It was at one time a comparatively plentiful fish, that could be obtained for food purposes at an almost nominal expense, and a period dating eighty years back is thought to have been a golden age so far as the salmon-fisheries were concerned. But, in my opinion, it is more than questionable if salmon, or indeed any of our sea or river animals, ever were so magically abundant as has been represented. At the time, a rather indefinite time, however—ranging from the beginning to the end of last century, and frequently referred to by writers on the salmon question—when farm-servants were compelled to eat of that fish more frequently than seemed good for their stomachs, or when the country laird, visiting London, ordered a steak for himself, with “a bit o’ saumon for the laddie,” and was thunderstruck at the price of the fish, we must bear in mind, as a strong element of the question, that there were few distant markets available; it was only on the Tweed, Tay, Severn, and other salmon streams that the salmon was really plentiful.

No such regular commerce as that now prevailing was carried on in fresh salmon at the period indicated. In fact, properly speaking, there was no commerce beyond an occasional dispatch to London per smack, or the sale of a few fish in country market-towns, and salmon has been known to be sold in these places at so low a rate as a penny or twopence a pound weight. Most of these fish, at the time I have indicated, were boiled in pickle, or split up and cured as kippers. In those days there were neither steamboats nor railways to hurry away the produce of the sea or river to London or Liverpool; it is not surprising, therefore, that in those good old times salmon could almost be had for the capturing. Poaching—that is poaching as a trade—was unknown. As I have already stated, when the people resident on a river were allowed to capture as many fish as they pleased, or when they could purchase all they required at a nominal price, there was no necessity for them to capture the salmon while it was on the beds in order to breed. Farm-servants on the Tay or Tweed had usually a few poached fish, in the shape of a barrel of pickled salmon, for winter use. At that time, as I have already said in treating of the salmon, men went out on a winter night to “burn the water,” but then it was simply by way of having a frolic. In those halcyon days country gentlemen killed their salmon in the same sense as they killed their own mutton—viz. for household eating; there was no other demand for the fish than that of their own servants or retainers. Farmers kept their smoked or pickled salmon for winter use, in the same way as they did pickled pork or smoked bacon. The fish, comparatively speaking, were allowed to fulfil the instincts of their nature and breed in peace: those owners, too, of either upper or lower waters, who delighted in angling, had abundance of attractive sport; and, so far as can be gleaned from personal inquiry or reading, there was during the golden age of the salmon a rude plenty of home-prepared food of the fish kind, which, even with the best-regulated fisheries, we can never again, in these times of increasing population, steam-power, and augmented demand, hope to see.

At present the very opposite of all this prevails. Farmers or cottars cannot now make salmon a portion of their winter’s store: permission to angle for that fish is a favour not very easily procured, because even the worst upper waters can be let each season at a good figure; and more than all that, the fish has become individually so valuable as to tempt persons, by way of business, to engage extensively in its capture at times when it is unlawful to take it, and the animal is totally unfit for food. A prime salmon is, on the average, quite as valuable as a Southdown sheep or an obese pig, both of which cost money to rear and fatten; and at certain periods of the year salmon has been known to bring as much as ten shillings per pound weight in a London fish-shop! There have been many causes at work to bring about this falling-off in our supplies; but ignorance of the natural history of the fish, the want of accord between the upper and lower proprietors of salmon rivers, the use of stake and bag nets, poaching during close-times, and the consequent capture of thousands of gravid fish, as well as the immense amount of overfishing by the lessees of fishing stations, are doubtless among the chief reasons.

If these misfortunes occur with an important and individually valuable fish like the salmon, which is so well hedged round by protective laws, and which is so accessible that we can watch it day by day in our rivers—and that such misfortunes have occurred is quite patent to the world, indeed some of the best streams of England, at one time noted for their salmon, are at this moment nearly destitute of fish—how much more is it likely, then, that similar misfortunes may occur to the unwatched and unprotected fishes of the sea, which spawn in a greater world of water, with thousands of chances against their seed being even so much as fructified, let alone any hope of its ever being developed into fish fit for table purposes? In the sea the larger fish are constantly preying on the smaller, and the waste of life, as I have elsewhere explained, is enormous: the young fish, so soon as they emerge from their fragile shell, are devoured in countless millions, not one in a thousand perhaps escaping the dangers of its youth. Shoals of haddocks, for instance, find their way to the deposits of herring-spawn just as the eggs are bursting into life, or immediately after they have vivified, so that hundreds of thousands of these infantile fry and quickening ova are annually devoured. The hungry codfish are eternally devouring the young of other kinds, and their own young as well; and all throughout the depths of ocean the strong fishes are found to be preying on the weak, and a perpetual war is being waged for daily food. Reliable information, it is true, cannot easily be obtained on these points, it being so difficult to observe the habits of animals in the depths of the ocean; and none of our naturalists can inform us how long it is before our white fish arrive at maturity, and at what age a codfish or a turbot becomes reproductive; nor can our economists do more than guess the percentage of eggs that ripen into fish, or the number of these that are likely to reach our tables as food.

As has been mentioned in a previous chapter of this volume, the supply of haddocks and other GadidÆ was once so plentiful around the British coasts, that a short line, with perhaps a score of hooks, frequently replenished with bait, would be quite sufficient to capture a few thousand fish. The number of hooks was gradually extended, till now they are counted by the thousand, the fishermen having to multiply the means of capture as the fish become less plentiful. About forty years ago the percentage of fish to each line was very considerable. Eight hundred hooks would take about 750 fish; but now, with a line studded with 4000 hooks, the fishermen sometimes do not take 100 fish. It was recently stated by a correspondent of the John o’ Groat Journal, a newspaper published in the fishing town of Wick, that a fish-curer there contracted some years ago with the boats for haddocks at 3s. 6d. per hundred, and that at that low price the fishing yielded the men from £20 to £40 each season; but that now, although he has offered the fishermen 12s. a hundred, he cannot procure anything like an adequate supply.

As the British sea-fisheries afford remunerative employment to a large body of the population, and offer a favourable investment for capital, it is surely time that we should know authoritatively whether or not there be truth in the falling-off in our supplies of herring and other white fish. At one of the Glasgow fish-merchants’ annual soirees, held a year or two ago it was distinctly stated that all kinds of fish were less abundant now than in former years, and that in proportion to the means of capture the result was less. Mr. Methuen reiterated such opinions again and again. “I reckon our fisheries,” said this enterprising fish-merchant on one occasion, “if fostered and properly fished, a national source of wealth of more importance and value than the gold-mines of Australia, because the gold mines are exhaustible; but the living, propagating, self-cultivating gift of God is inexhaustible, if rightly fished by man, to whom they are given for food. It is evident anything God gives is ripe and fit for food. ‘Have dominion,’ not destruction, was the command. Any farmer cutting his ripe clover grass would not only be reckoned mad, but would, in fact, be so, were he to tear up the roots along with the clover, under the idea that he was thus obtaining more food for his cattle, and then wondering why he had no second crop to cut. His cattle would starve, himself and family be beggared, and turned out of their farm as improvident and destructive, who not only beggared themselves, but to the extent of their power impoverished the people by destroying the resources of their country. The farmer who thus destroys the hopes of a rising crop by injudicious farming is not only his own enemy, but the enemy of his country as well.” Such evidence could be multiplied to any extent if it were necessary, but I feel that quite enough has been said to prove the point. It is a point I have no doubt upon whatever, and persons who have studied the question are alarmed, and say it is no use blinking the matter any longer—that the demand for fish as an article of food is not only beginning to exceed the supply, but that the supply obtained, combined with waste of spawn and other causes, is beginning to exceed the breeding power of the fish. In the olden time, when people only caught to supply individual wants, fish were plentiful, in the sense that no scarcity was ever experienced, and the shoals of sea-fish, it was thought at one time, would never diminish; but since the traffic became a commercial speculation the question has assumed a totally different aspect, and a sufficient quantity cannot now be obtained. Who ever hears now of monster turbot being taken by the trawlers? Where are the miraculous hauls of mackerel that used to gladden the eyes of the fishermen? Where are now the waggon-loads of herring to use as manure, as in the golden age of the fisheries? I do not require to pause for the reply—echo would only mock my question by repeating it. Exhausted shoals and inferior fish tell us but too plainly that there is reason for alarm, and that we have in all probability broken at last upon our capital stock!

What then, if this be so, will be the future of the British fisheries? I have already, and more than once, in preceding pages, hinted my doubts of the existence of the enormous fish-supplies of former days; in my opinion the supposed plentifulness of all kinds of fish must in a large degree have been a myth, or at least but relative, founded in all probability on the fluctuating demand and the irregular supply. Were there not an active but unseen demolition of the fish-shoals, and were these shoals as gigantic as people imagine them to be, the sea would speedily become like stirabout, so that in time ships would not be able to sail from port to port. Imagine a few billions of herrings, each pair multiplying at the rate of thirty thousand per annum! picture the codfish, with its million ratio of increase; and then add, by way of enhancing the bargain, a million or two of the flat fish family throwing in their annual quota to the total, and figures would be arrived at far too vast for human comprehension. In fact, without some compensating balance, the waters on the globe would not contain a couple of years’ increase! If fish have that tendency to multiply which is said, how comes it that in former years, when there was not a tithe of the present demand, when the population was but scant, and the means of inland carriage to the larger seats of population rude and uncertain, the ocean did not overflow and leave its inhabitants on its shores?

It seems perfectly clear that we have hitherto seriously exaggerated the stock; it could never have been of the extent indicated, because then no draughts could have had any great effect, no matter how enormous they might have been. From various natural causes, some of which I have indicated in a former chapter, the stock has been kept in balance; and it seems now perfectly clear that by a course of fishing so excessive as that carried on at present, coupled with the destruction incidental to unprotected breeding, we must at all events speedily narrow if not exhaust the capital stock. We have done so in the case of the salmon; and the best remedy for that evil which has yet been discovered is cultivation—pisciculture, in fact—which science, or rather art, I have already treated of on its own merits. In ancient days the land yielded sufficient roots and fruits for the wants of its then population without cultivation; but as population increased and larger supplies became necessary, cultivation was tried, and now in all countries the culture of the land is one of the main employments of the people. The sea, too, must be cultivated, and the river also, if we desire to multiply or replenish our stock of fish.

As to the introduction of strange fishes, either sea or river, I for one will be glad to see them, if they are suitable. It would of course be a great misfortune to introduce any fish into our waters that would only become fat by preying on those fishes which are at present plentiful. Some naturalists think that the introduction of Silurus is a misfortune; I am not of that opinion, because in the kind of water suitable for the growth of Silurus glanis no other fish of any value is to be found, so that no ill could be done. The introduction into our British waters of another fish has been advocated—viz. the Goorami. It is a Chinese fish and has been introduced with great success into the Mauritius, and M. Coste is of opinion that it may be acclimatised in France, indeed he is trying the experiment. The Goorami, it seems, is a delicious fish, so far as its flavour is concerned, and grows to a great size in a short time. I need not say any more on this part of my subject. If the man is a benefactor to his country who makes two blades of grass grow where only one grew before, what shall be said of the man who introduces to us a new food-fish?

Were we better acquainted with the natural history of fish, it would be easy to regulate the fisheries. The everlasting demand for sea-produce has caused the sea-fishing, like the salmon-fishing, to be prosecuted at improper seasons, and fish have been, indeed are daily, to a large extent, sold in a state that renders them quite improper for human food. Another cause of the constantly-lessening supplies may be also mentioned. Up till a recent period it was thought all fish were migratory, and the reason usually assigned for unsuccessful fishing was that the fish had removed to some other place! Thus the fact of a particular colony having been fished up was in some degree hidden, chiefly from ignorance of the habits of the animal. This migratory instinct, so far as our principal sea-fish are concerned, is purely mythical. The rediscovery of the Rockall cod-bank must tend to dissipate these old-fashioned suppositions of our naturalists. All fish are local, from the salmon to the sprat, and each kind has its own abiding-place. The salmon keeps unfailingly to its own stream, the oyster to its own bank, the lobster to its particular rock, and the herring to its own bay. Fishermen are beginning now to understand this, and can tell the locality to which a particular fish belongs, from the marks upon it. A Tay salmon differs from a Tweed one, and Norway lobsters can be readily distinguished from those brought from Orcadia. Then, again, the fine haddocks caught in the bay of Dublin differ much from those taken in the Firth of Forth, whilst Lochfyne herrings and Caithness herrings have each distinct peculiarities.

In regard to the enormous waste of spawn which I have chronicled, what more can I say? I have in various pages of this work shown how fish-roe is wasted, and at the risk of censure for again repeating myself (I have already more than once done so purposely), I must once more ask attention to the millions of cod ova criminally wasted in the French sardine-fishery. I am presuming, in making this allusion, that cod are expressly caught with full roes for the purpose of supplying this bait. The English fishermen can hit on the sprat shoals without a ground-bait; surely the French fishermen can do what we do.

The regulation of the herring-fisheries (and the proper protection of the herring) is surrounded with innumerable difficulties, because of our scant knowledge of the natural history of the animal. I have already, and more than once, in the preceding pages of this work, alluded to the striking incongruity of protecting one fish during its spawning time, and yet making the same time in the life of another fish the legal period for its capture. But a close-time for the herring, from the fact of that fish breeding on some part of the coast all the year round, although not impossible, will be difficult to arrange. If, as is pretty certain, there be races of herring that breed in every month of the year, would it be advisable to shut up the fisheries? and if, as some writers on the natural history of the herring assert, that fish only collects into shoals at the time it is called on to obey its procreative instinct, at what other period of its existence could it be captured, even admitting that at that time of its life it is least fitted to become the food of mankind? True, we have only gone on fishing for herrings in a routine way at particular seasons of the year, and, were the experiment tried, we might hit on the shoals at a more congenial time. The shoals of particular districts—if, as I assume, the herring is very local—will have each their own spawning time, and there might be a few weeks’ close season then—not so much to save the taking of the gravid fish, as to allow them a quiet interval, during which they might deposit their spawn. The period of the herring’s reproduction might, I think, be easily determined by constructing a sea-pond, where a few of these fish could breed, and the growth of the young fish be carefully watched.

In the case of the salmon there is no difficulty about a close-time, because we know the breeding seasons of each river; but it would be difficult to divide the sea into compartments; and even if we could, and a close-time were to be instituted, would not the strict logic of the position dictate that the close-time should be for the protection of the fish during their breeding season? But again, if it be granted that the breeding season is the only time that we can take the fish, would not such a close-time be practically putting an end to the fishing? It is a curious fact, as well as a curious fishing anomaly, that we have had a close-time for herrings on the west coast of Scotland but not on the east coast! And I can trace no good that the close-time has accomplished; it is not known that it increases the supply of fish, but it is known that a close-time impedes the prosecution of the other fisheries by depriving the poor men of a supply of bait. The fishermen often use the herring as a bait for other fishes.

Although Scotland is the main seat of the herring-fishery, I should like to see statistics, similar to those collected in Scotland, taken at a few English ports for a period of years, in order that we might obtain additional data from which to arrive at a right conclusion as to the increase or decrease of the fishery for herring. So far as the capture and cure of herrings are concerned, we have in Scotland, what ought to be in every country, an excellent fishery police. The Hon. Mr. Bouverie Primrose, when giving evidence before a fishery commission, described the official duties of the Board of Scottish White-fish Fisheries as being:—“To give clearances to herring-fishery vessels going out to sea, and to receive notices from curers on shore of their intention to cure; to see to the measures for the delivery of fresh herring, as between buyer and seller; to the size of the barrel for British white cured herring, and to the quality of the cure, branding the first quality, and collecting the fees for the same; attending on the exportation; to inspect the exports in order to see that they were in proper order; preventing the use of such nets as Parliament had declared to be illegal; protecting the sprat fishermen in their rights of boundary; maintaining order on the fishery grounds, and in connection therewith carrying out the police regulations for naming and numbering boats and their sails; receiving and restoring lost fishing property; building fishery piers and harbours; protecting the spawn of herring and the herring-fisheries generally, according to Act of Parliament; maintaining herring close-time as fixed and appointed by Parliament; furnishing returns and statistics of the herring-fisheries of Scotland and the Isle of Man, and aiding in maintaining the fishery convention with France. The functions of the Board extended over the whole coast of Scotland, and in regard to statistics to the Isle of Man, and in respect to the branding of herring over the northern portion of the coast of Northumberland.”

Might not the functions of the Board be so extended as to embrace a statistical inquiry into the capture of haddocks, cod, and ling (other than those to be cured), turbot, etc., in Scotland? We all agree heartily enough in Scotland with the Board’s functions of harbour improvement and fishery police, and we do not grudge, therefore, in any degree, the £15,000 which are expended for its maintenance. Scotland gets so small a portion of the public money in proportion to what it contributes to the revenue that no one would desire to see it deprived of this small grant. The only question connected with it is its proper expenditure. I object entirely to a portion of the duties of the Board—i.e. certifying the quality of the cure. Government might as well step in to certify the manufacture of Dunlop cheese or Glasgow cotton. True, the brand has now to be paid for, and moreover is not at all compulsory, so that curers may trade on their own name if they please, and it is satisfactory to think that they are now doing so in an annually increasing degree.

The salmon-fisheries may be left to their proprietors; the county gentlemen, and others who own salmon-fisheries, seem now to be thoroughly alive to the great danger of overfishing, which has hitherto been the bane of this valuable animal. The chief requisites for a great salmon river and a series of healthy and productive fisheries are—first, a good spawning ground and a provision for the fish attaining it with the least possible trouble; second, a long rest during the spawning season; as also, third, a weekly close-time of many hours. To insure protection to the eggs and to the young fish during the tenderest period of their lives, I would have, as an aid to the natural spawning-beds, artificial breeding-ponds and egg-boxes on every large river; and it would be well if the proprietors of all our larger salmon streams would agree to work their fisheries, as was long ago proposed, on the plan of a joint-stock company, the shares to be allocated on some equitable plan so that both lower and upper proprietors would share in the produce of the river. It is needless to point out to owners of salmon properties the advantages and saving that would at once accrue from such a mode, and such a plan would especially be the best way of settling the existing differences between the upper and lower holders. It was well said by the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the salmon-fisheries of England and Wales, that “it has been found by experience in all the three countries that the surest way to increase the stock is to give the upper proprietors an interest in preserving them. The upper waters are, in fact, the nursery of the fish; it is there that the breeding operations take place, it is there that the wasteful destruction committed by poachers and depredators, if suffered to have their way, is carried on. It lies with those to whom the rights of fishing, and the lands adjacent to those parts of the streams belong, either to permit the ruinous waste of the breeding fish to go on, or to take measures for protecting them. They cannot take either course without in the one case conferring a benefit, and in the other permitting an injury, to all the parties lower down. But it is almost needless to say that they will not make exertions or incur expense to preserve the fish, unless encouraged to do so by being allowed to reap some share of the produce of the waters.”

The laws of Scotland as to her salmon rivers are confessedly defective—confessed by the constant efforts to amend them, often ending in only making them worse. This will be eternal if some attempt be not made to act according to the reason of the thing; clearing the ground, and starting on a new and rational principle, instead of tinkering or trying to tinker what is past mending, and never ought to have been. Rivers are subjects entirely different in their nature from lands. A man, having secured a patch of land, may (as is generally understood) do anything he pleases with what he calls “his own” but render it a nuisance. This is wrong; for his obligation to the country, if not to himself, is to use it to the best advantage for the public good. As to rivers, this obligation is more distinct. They are more of the nature of public property, both as regards the public generally and those holding property on their banks and so having private interests in them. No man at the mouth of a river has any moral or legal right to stop the fish from ascending to their breeding-places. This, clear as it may seem, is not generally recognised, and hence the loss to the country, and misery to the useful and valuable animals bred in them, or that might be bred in them, from the ignorant and reckless self-seeking of some, and the negligence or pointed disregard of all interests displayed by others.[22]

I have not in the course of this work intruded many of my own theories as to fish and fishing upon the reader; but I have not been studying the subject for twelve years without theorising a little, and when the proper time comes I shall have a great deal more to say about the natural history of our food-fishes than I have said in the present volume. In the meantime I am anxious, as regards the whole of the sea fisheries, to inculcate the duty of collecting more and better statistics than we have ever yet obtained.

Our great farm, the sea, is free to all—too free; there is no seed or manure to provide, and no rent to pay. Every adventurer who can procure a boat may go out and spoliate the shoals; he has no care for the growth or preservation of animals which he has been taught to think inexhaustible. In one sense it is of no consequence to a fisherman that he catches codlings instead of cod; whatever size his fish may be, they yield him what he fishes for—money. What if all the herrings he captures be crowded with spawn? what if they be virgin fish that have never added a quota to the general stock? That is all as nothing to the fisherman as long as they bring him money. It is the same in all fisheries. Our free unregulated fisheries are, in my humble opinion, a thorough mistake. If a fisherman, say with a capital of £500 in boats, nets, etc., had invested the same amount of money in a breeding-farm, how would he act? Would he not earn his living and increase his capital by allowing his animals to breed? and he would certainly never cut down oats or wheat in a green state. But the fish-farmers do all these things, and the Fishery Board stamps them with approval. We must look better into these matters; and I would crave the expenditure by government of a few thousand pounds definitely to settle, by well-devised experiments, all those points in the natural history of the herring and other white fish which clog the prosecution of these particular fisheries. Surely it would not be difficult, as I have already suggested, to construct a sea-pond where we could observe the spawn from the time of its deposit till the period at which it quickened into life; and we could note the growth of the fish and so fix beyond cavil the period at which our most important food fishes become reproductive. Further, could not the fisherman be made to pay a small sum of money annually by way of licence, he being bound at the same time to give in a schedule to a registrar, or some other officer to be appointed, of the number and gross weight of the different kinds of fish caught, the number of lines and hooks used in the capture, and the time taken to capture them? Many other changes might be made in the machinery and time of capture; these, however, I will take another opportunity to point out; my present purpose has simply been to bring into a focus our various fishing industries and describe to the public the Harvest of the Sea.