Prisoners Provide Nets For Cook Strait Research Team

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28346, 3 August 1957, Page 6

Prisoners Provide Nets For Cook Strait Research Team

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, AuguSt 2. Prisoners serving sentences in Mt. Crawford gaol have made the nets for a forthcoming expedition, under Mr John Carrick, lecturer in zoology at Victoria University College. Without their help it is doubtful if the expedition to explore the depths of Cook Strait later this month could have been undertaken. A party of university researchers will carry out the search for strange fish from the naval corvette Tui. Professor L. R. Richardson, pro-

fessor of zoology at Victoria, said and one of them has been sold for demolition. that some weeks ago he lectured at the prison on deep sea experiments being conducted in Cook Strait, and during his talk he mentioned that members of the team had to work hard to make their own nets. Shortly after he had finished the lecture, he was approachecd by a group of prisoners who said they would like to help in preparing the nets. With the approval of the prison authorities, the men later made two large new nets, each of them 12 feet across the mouth and 38 feet long; They had also repaired another big net damaged during the deep-sea fishing at Easter. Unless these nets had been forthcoming—and they probably could not have been manufactured in time by the expedition members alone—the whole project might have had to be delayed, said Professor Richardson.

Historic Thames.—-“ The lower Thames is not so well decorated as the lower Seine, but it has ’the sheen of history and the charm of solid work. You’ can go by steamer from Tower Bridge to the’ sea and back: and in all the wide reaches you will meet the ships of every nation and see something of the work of the greatest port in the world and see the history of ; England as you go along,” said Sir Alan Herbert speaking in the series “The Britain We Know,” broadcast by the 8.8. C.