PURSE SEINING

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 56, 30 November 1923, Page 10

PURSE SEINING

SUPERIOR TO’TR'AWC METHODS FEWER INJURED IMMATURE FISH “Purse seining is a great improvement over the trawling method in the matter of injury to immature fish,’ said the Secretary of the Marine Department (Mr. G. C. Godfrey) to a Dominion representative yesterday. “We had a full opportunity of seeing its working while in Auckland. The boat used was tho old Countess, but she was rather high out of the water for the purpose. There is no doubt that fewer small fish of each species are injured than with the trawl. The latter has to be dragged for several hours over the bottom, and many small fish are crushed and hauled in dead. Fewer fish are taken in the first place in the purse seine, and in the second place they are none the worse. In one haul of 200 baskets of fish there were only two dozen immature fish. I did not see that hsul, but the day I went out there were no immature fish in the haul at all. The trawler, again, hopes to take all sorts of fish, and so the mesh has to bo small, because if the mesh were made to let through immature fish of the larger species, it would let through the mature fish of smaller kinds.

“A good deal of opposition to purs® seining was put up by the smaller haul-net fishermen, and to meet their case in a reasonable way the Minister of Marine drew a line from the Paonui spit light to Dead Man’s Point on th® Coromandel Peninsula. South of this purse seining will not bo permitted. Trawlers are being kept north of an imaginary line between Tiri Light and Cabbage Bay. Between these lines purse seiners will be, allowed to fish.