FISH FOR ENGLAND

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LVI, Issue 41, 24 May 1935, Page 5

FISH FOR ENGLAND

SHORTAGE IN NORTH SEA.

TRAWLING TOO EFFICIENT.

(From the Guardian's Special Correspondent—By Air kail).

LONDON, April 27.

The North Sea is becoming empty of fish, probably for all time, yet Britain is eating more fish to-day than ever before. Every year there is landed on these shores 525,000 tons of fish. It is sold hv 10,000 fishmongers' shops, and 10,000 more fried fish shops. The price they get for it is £19,000,000. There are a quarter of a million people working in this industry of getting fish, and three-fifths of them work on the water. It is only exceeded in size by agriculture, coal, steel and cars.

One can get some idea of the amount of fish . Englishmen eat by the fact that while Britain has 1200 trawlers, there are only 57 in all America, while Canada has three. Yet to-day there is comparatively ■little fish, with certain exceptions such as plaice, sole and herring, worth catching within 1000 miles of the shores of Britain. Efficient steam trawlers have fished the seas empty. Their wonderfully scientific trawls, which scrape the bottom of the sea, disturb the breeding grdunds, missing no fish, large or small, and have caught everything worth catching, leaving the whole of the North Sea and the Channel practically barren of sizable fish. The fish, it is believed, will never come back under present conditions. Because of the dearth caused by the trawlers, the hunt for the fish is yearly leading the fishermen further and further afield.