FISHERY MATTERS.

Evening Star, Issue 7475, 20 March 1888, Page 3

FISHERY MATTERS.

TO THE EDITOR.

Sin,—To a great many it is very astonishing how such an abortion as the Fisher ies Oonsc r ration Act ever came to birth, and in hope that some of our fishery representatives may improve their knowledge with regard to these matters I now address you. Some anomalies in the Act I will endeavor to point out. For example, fishers are authorised to use nets of different sizes of mesh for various kinds of fish. One would therefore expect that the product of such nets would be their legal property for sale, else why is the net made legal? Such, however, is not tue fact; and fishers are allowed to catch fish of an illegal size, with a net of legal size of mesh ! Again: fishers must measure the fish and weigh them, and return those under specified weight and measurement to the sea alive. Now, how are they to carry this out? Fish naturally object to be weighed and measured while alive! Picture a fisher, with a net containing one hundred dozen of fish, with 4oz weights and scales, weighing each fish ! Is it a practicable way of conserving the fish? How nice it will be in frost and snow ! Fish caught by the gill cannot be thrown back to the sea alive, as the gill being destroyed the fish d'es. The Act reverses the matter with regard to some particular kinds of fish. Garfish are legal over nine h-ches long, but the mesh of net rcuit be one inch wide. Now, asgarfibh ate notprnic to corpulence, and natural'y a n : neinch gaifisb is no thicker than a penholder, fishers, if they wiiht.il, would find onsiderable difficulty to citch the legal s ; ze with the legal net. All the different kinds of school fish frequenting New Zealand waters giow to a larger w'ze in the Nortli Island than in our c>l ?cr climitc, and the Act has evidently been framed from weights and s'zes of fish about Cook Strait, no difference being made for the South Island vai'cties; and choice fish will therefore be excluded from cur Southern marker.. Although sole and thunder are getting scarcer every year, fishers of thirty years' experience are aware that there is no diminution in the supply of school fish, although the two-inch mesh has been in use ever since they arrived in the colony, being that al?o in use in all British watcis. With regard to ground fish, harbor improvements have destroyed their breeding-beds, and the mole at the Heads stops the outside supply. The Act, therefore, fails to conserve the fish, as they are dead when its requirements are fulfilled ; they, like the time of its originators, arc wasted.—l am, etc., Piscks. Port Chalmers, March 10.