FACTS ABOUT THE FISHERIES.

Auckland Star, Volume 55, Issue 210, 4 September 1924, Page 7

FACTS ABOUT THE FISHERIES.

(Published by Arrangement. l )

(RUBY E. WATSON.) _ The public have just been told by Mr. sanford that the quantity and quality )f fish is much superior since the steam rrawler has been erupted, and purse ieine nettiug resorted to, and yet jchnapper is decreasing so rapidly that ■ye have had thrown on the market 'silver streak," which is dog fish, or a species of shark. We laugh at the Chinese and Maori "or eating shark, and yet here in Auckland, where we are told our fish is so Plentiful, the ignorant public are eating some of the same species.. That certainly does not look as it the quality ivas better 'or the quantity greater; iuile the reverse, and the" truth is," schnappcr is bepoming scarce and is being supplemented by the coarsest of ish. Mr. Sanford endeavours to. draw, or shall I say,, trawl a red herring across the subject. He carefully evades the true issue, and when his statements are proved false, finds a feeble excuse, as iier example, he asserts: "The idiocy of man being able to fish out the ocean." He has been proved wrong, and that the wide ocean had been cleaned out of i two valuable species of whale. His jxcuse was that these creatures take | 14 years to breed. We are, however, complaining of trawling in the Hauraki Sulf. and not of the ocean, and the ' trawlers are working in the same gulf md not going out into the ocean. Between Cabbage Bay and Cape Colville was once a wonderful fishing irea; it is now absolutely cleaned, out owing to trawling operations. At 9netangi, Waiheke, there used to be »reat fishing grounds, but ask any of the residents, and they" will tell you, whereas, formerly plenty of fish could tie caught, now, after the trawler has worked right up to the wharf, and in shallow waters, as it does, not a fish ;an be caught,'for-weeks afterwards— ;very fish in the bay has been cleaned ip. -, Last year, on the east side of Ponui fsland, the line fishermen were getting plenty .of fish, month after month; then :ame -along a steam trawler and completely cleaned .the place,out in a," few lays. . When the trawlers.and seine net iring up, as they do, thousands of indersized fish,' they are left in heaps >n the deck of the vessel, and the najority are dead -before they are rhrown back into the sea. Before trawling was introduced the jovernment strongly advocated the :onservation of fish for the unborn nillions. Trawlers, with their 300----lorse-power engines, act like a disc larrow over the sea bottom, dragging tway the food, shelter and protection >f the young fry; so that they become , m easy prey to their natural enemies, j destroy the nest, food and shelter of! lirds, rabbits, and other wild animals, md they will soon perish. Schnapper, and nearly all our fish, ike salmon, work right up into shallow vaters'to spawn, and they are caught n shallow waters, too heavy with roe :o travel into the "deep, dark ocean," tad. this area where they spawn, is the •cry area the seine net is working. ; We have a chart of Danish waters, j bowing the areas that are prohibited i o the seine net, and some of these areas ire much larger than the Hauraki Julf'; but none of them are such valuible breeding grounds as our Hauraki Julf. . " . I quote from the chief Inspector of fisheries for Denmark, who is the first luthority in the world on seining: "In ny opinion, regardless and continued cine netting on a ground where young ish are abundant, will, in the' process if time, turn out to have a severe effect in the composition and size of he stocks of mature fish recruited from he growing place in question; the more lerceptible the narrower the spawning md growing areas are." In regard to the Firth of Thames, t has never recovered from the cleaning iut it suffered, when the two trawlers, dinnie Casey, and Waitoa, were allowed o operate there. When the Minnie Casey and Waitoa ve're taken out of the Fifth of Thames, hey were sent to. the West Coast, v-here fish is plentiful, but is not the mrsery and breeding ground of the ish,as the Thames Gulf is. ■ i Soles are still being caught at the .'hames. but are strung with flounders md sold as flounders. i It beeonies a necessity to double the iinount of trawlers to bring in the same imount of fish, as it is becoming' rapidly career; there is not nearly so many chnapper in the Gulf as there was ten 'ears ago. We* want trawlers in the igllt place, and that is not in the Julf. We -don't want a bull in the Irawiug room, nor trawlers in the Gulf. Mr. Sanford asserts that outside the Julf the waters deepen so as to prolibit trawling. That is incorrect. There 3 a splendid trawling bank off Gisborne,; .nil the West Coast. is teeming with ish. It is also reported by Frank Jullen, F.R.G.S., that whilst he was ravelling the Kerm&decs; the boat was ontinually passing shallow areas of raters. swarming with kingfish and chnapper, and every species of fish, laybe Mr. Saiiford's trawlers are afraid o travel out of sight of land. The mi to the Kermadccs is not half as far s many English trawlers have to go ur their hauls. The Hauraki Gulf will j c closed sooner or later: it will be losed now if we are to save our fish upply and to ensure the saving of our sh nurseries and breeding grounds, or t will be'closed later, because it will c utterly exhausted, the fish cleaned ut. and not'worth trawling. We have sfc'rinj-ent resulations to rotect our oyster supply; it lias become ecessary now to have equally stringent egulations to conserve our fish, and hat means the closing of the Hauraki Julf- to steam trawlers, and a three■iile limit for seine netting, before it is oo late. - -'3