"THEY NEVER GIVE IN."

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 163, 12 July 1928, Page 10

"THEY NEVER GIVE IN."

PEOPLE FROM YORKSHIRE. A PERSISTENT AGITATION. TRAWLING IN THE GULF. "I'm from Yorkshire. The harder you hit me the higher I bounce." This remark was made by Mrs. Ruby Watson, of St. Helier's, this morning, in stating her determination to continue the agitation to get the Hauraki Gulf closed to trawling and seine fishing. Most people have a hobby. In Mrs. Watson's case it is the Auckland fisheries, and for the past seventeen years altruistic motives have caused her to lead a persistent agitation to preserve the gulf fish supplies. Mrs. Watson said that the matter was to come up during the present session of Parliament. A large petition would be presented, and the movement would be backed by resolutions carried by the National Council of Women, and various local bodies. It was hoped that legislation would be passed to bar the whole of the Hauraki Gulf to trawlers and seine netters.

Airs. Watson said that gradual progress had been made since she started an agitation seventeen years ago. As a result, in the years that followed portions of the Hauraki Gulf had been closed to trawlers, and quite recently an area in the vicinity of Mercury Bay had also been barred.

Airs. Watson said that from her own observations there had been a great crease in the numbers of sharks in the Gulf during the past few years, and a corresponding decrease of schnapper and other food fish. She considered that the reason was that the balance of nature had been upset, as formerly the "old men" schnapper ate the young sharks. On one occasion last summer she counted the fins of nearly thirty sharks cutting the water in one of the bays at Waiheke.

Mrs. Watson is familiar with the North Sea fishing conditions, and the restrictions that had to be adopted there.

"Yorkshire people never give in when] they have a good cause," said Mrs. Watson in conclusion. "That is why I am going to fight on until the trawlers and seine net fishers are debarred from operating in the Hauraki Gulf."