FISH HOSPITAL

Stratford Evening Post, Volume IV, Issue 127, 11 May 1936, Page 5

FISH HOSPITAL

Mineral Waters Of Northern Rivers.

KILLING OF SEA-LICE

Press Association —Copyright. Auckland, To-day.

In answer to the appeal of the Thames fishermen to Parliament that seine netting should be prohibited In the Firth of Thames, the skippers of seine net boats sailing out of Auckland have advised the Government that they will almost unanimously approve of the prohibition of the taking of fish, whether by seine net, set net or any other means, within three miles of the mouth of the Waihou River. The seine netters have decided, after years of observation, that the estuaries of the Waihou and of the other rivers that flow into the Firth of Thames are natural fish sawatoriurns, because fish, particularly dabs and flounders, that are being eaten alive by sea lice, go for relief into the estuaries, where the flow of freshwater, strongly impregnated as it is with mineral salts, kills the lice, though the fish themselves can live in it. Fish plagued with lice are often caught in the Firth of Thames, and invariably they have been heading towards the mouth of one of the streams that empties into the firth. Such fish have been marked and returned to the water, and have been recaptured a few days later, heading seawards again and free from lice, though they showed the sears where those devilish creatures had been eating into them.