FISHING INDUSTRY

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 91, 14 October 1922, Page 12

FISHING INDUSTRY

SIGNIFICANCE ON EMPIRE WELFARE. ' ' •". I

"The fisheries question .is/""to my mind, one of great interest 'at present to the British Empire/ said Lord Morris, former Prime Minister of Newfoundland, to a "New York Times" interviewer. "Great Britain itself possesses v the greatest sea-fishing industry in the world. It also has potentially magnificent salmon and fresh waterfisheries, but most of these, I regret to state, have been wilfully destroyed by unrestricted pollution.' '■'•'•' ■■■■■•■ -. "Great Britain does not produce, arid can never hope to produce, within its boundaries the food necessary to maintain .its population. Much of it must come from outside, and the sea fisheries can, and do, make a substantial contributioii to the food supplied. .It is a contribution moreover which nature supplies,, and which man has only to take. It is an import for .which- payment by corresponding exports is not required, and the cost of it is chiefly represented by the earning of producers and distributors.

"Most of the countries of the Empire contain fish-bearing rivers and lakes, and have sea fisheries ..within. their reach. None are richer in that respect than Newfoundland and the Dominion of Canada. For all of them it "is a matter of moment to develop-and to exploit their fisheries on rational lines, for fish is a valuable food supply which, being constantly replenished by nature, is practically inexhaustible, That is why we on the Council of the British Empire Exhibition think that no display of all the resources of the Empire can be complete which does not. find a place for the products of the rivers, lakes, and seas, which must be taken to include not only edible fishes but: such objects of.commerce as sponges, pearls, corals, and valuable shells.

While the direct economic significance of the fisheries is therefore great, their indirect significance is even greater, for ever since man first became a hunter (which was long before he be,canie a farmer), the fisheries have been the first and the best nursery of seamen, and ultimately the cohesion of. the Empire (not to mention the existence of the small island which is its heart),' /depends upon the maintenance of- our splendid breed of saameu. "To the population .of Great Britain, of conrse, the maintenance of sea communication ia absolutely vital, and every part of the Empire in a greater or less, degree has occasion to recognise the in-| fluence which has been evidenced" a-gain-and again throughout the history of sea. power and national prosperity.. ,Sea power does not depend primarily upon capital ships of war and their armament, but upon that familiarity with the sea, that spirit of enterprise, and that resourcefulness which is expressed in the term 'sea sense,' and is nowhere more evident than in those who are fishermen born.#

"It is a question whether the British, nation, or for that matter the British, peoples, have ever understood or appro-' ciated how much they owe to their sea fisheries. Nob even in tjhe great struggle, of 1914-19i8, when it may be said without exaggeration that the British and Dominion fisheries- saved Europe, did the people grasp the real meaning of the efficient service."