FISHING INDUSTRY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 1 April 1936, Page 7

FISHING INDUSTRY

NEW ZEALAND’S POSITION MAIN SUPPLIES Various aspects of the fishing industry in New Zealand were dealt with in an informative way by the Chief Inspector of Fisheries (Mr A. E. Ilefford) in a paper read to the New Zealand Association of Refrigeration. For the first fifty years of New Zealand’s history the line of reasoning and action in regard to fisheries was similar to that of Britain, lie said, but more recently other countries’ methods had been to a certain extent copied, though exactly similar action in the case of New Zealand would not achieve exactly similar results. First of all it was necessary to get an understanding of conditions as they existed in New Zealand.

Hand-lines, drag-nets or seines, and set-netting had been employed from tlie earliest days to the present time, but as soon as people with tbe necessary capital began to interest themselves in the industry trawling was introduced. This was a method known in primitive form in medieval England, blit one which by rapid development towards the end of tbe nineteenth ccnturv lifted the English fishing industry to.the zenith of its prosperity. It was pot surprising that trawling was looked to for the successful development of New Zealand’s fishing industry. Trawling took a great number of fish, and secured supplies with reasonable regularity, ns a properly-designed trawler could work in weather that kept other fishermen ashore. It involved a bigger capital, however, and therefore shut out the “small” man except as an employee. In 1923 a new method of fishing, known as Danish seinin fr . was introduced on the Hauraki Gulf grounds, where trawling was prohibited. This way of fishing had been invented in Denmark, gradually improved, and brought up to a high pitch of efficiency with the adoption of motor fishing vessels. The net was like a beach-seine, with a hunt or hag and long “wings” on either side, to each of which a long warp or hauling rope was attached. MAIN FISH SUPPLIES “A concentrated picture of the sources of our main fish supplies.” said Mr Hcfford. “may perhaps best be given by showing representative lists of the commoner kinds of fish that may occur in the catches made bv different fishing methods. Hand-lines, blue cod. snapper, groper, veil cod, barraooula; long lines, groper, liaptika, lnike, ling, snapper, conger; shore seines, flounders, soles, snapper, kahawai, Irevally, wareliou, millet; set nets, flounders, snapper, mullet, bulterfish, mold ; trawlers, terakihi, snapper, gurnard, trovally, flounder, join: dorv. ling, bnrrnrouta, dogfish: Danish seiners, flounders, snapper, gurnard, trevally, terakihi. iobn dory, and dogfish Ollier not insignificant portions of the sea’s harvest, arc the oysters dredged from Fnvenux Strait, the rock oysters picked from the between-tide zone of rockv shores in the Auckland district, the toheroa dug from the sand between high and low water mark, principally oil tbe west coast of North Auckland, and crayfish. which are taken in traps or nets off rocky coasts from Auckland to Southland.” Dealing with fish as food, Mr Hcfford pointed out that in process of time the more soluable compounds were washed out of the soil and found their

way to the sea, and that tnerefore there was nothing contributing to the food of man that did not find its way to the sea and became absorbed m marine life. Therefore, man must go to the sea for those minute hut essen--ial constituents of food which were so frequently lacking in land-derived products.