Trawling on the New Zealand Coast

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIX, Issue 21, 23 November 1907, Page 8

Trawling on the New Zealand Coast

The Nora Niven’s Experimental Work

Specially Written and Illustrated for the “New Zealand Graphic.” (Concluded from last week.)

AFTER the cod-end is opened and the fish tumble out on the deck, the net is lowered and stowed along the bulwarks if not set again right away, and all hands turn to. and clean the catch-—“gutting,” us it is termed on board. Squatted about hi boxes or on the combings of the hatch, the fishermen, wearing long rubber boots reaching up t<» their thighs, soon make short work of the fish, their knives slipping through gills, etc., with wonderful

rapidity. The proportion of refuse to the usable part of a fish is very small. Out of tin* big catch of schnapper. of which a picture was given last week, there would probably be only half-a-dozen shovel’s full of “innards” thrown

over to the wheeling gulls, who announced the find near and far with wiki screeches and their peculiar call like the rattle of halliards through tile sheave of a block. Instinct seems to tell them

a trawler is a good thing to watch, and they are not disappointed. Down in Hawke's Bay. where there are a good many trawlers at work, the gulls and other sea-birds get very cunning. They don't wait till the offal is thrown over

to them. They know as well as the fisherman when there is going to be a feast. As soon as the steam from the winch spurts out of the ship’s side, they grow agitated, and instead of wheeling round in graceful whorls, resting on poised pinions, or diving down from aloft to the -water’s surface and skimming along the crests of the tumbling waves, they sail round in short anxious curves, finishing up with a meteoric drop through space, and keep up a

greedy clattering, which ends in a satisfied gurgle, as with dropped legs and quickly fluttering wings, thev make a dart at the “dainty morsels” on the top of the water, and straightening up. fly away, making a meal reminiscent of W.

S. Percy eating macaroni in “The Messenber Boy.” The fish cleaned, they are hosed down with the donkey-engine hose and at once packed into cases the size and shape of fruit cases, which are branded with the name of the fish they contain. After the water has drained from them they are lowered into the cool chamber, where they remain till the ship arrives in port, and if everything has been carried out properly the fish are landed in almost as good condition as if they were fresh. The work of the representative of the Fisheries Department consists of keeping a complete record of the trawling. The bearings of the spot where the trawl was shot. and again where it was hauled, have to be recorded, and marked off on the chart. The nature of the bottom. the temperature of the water, and the quantity and description of the fish caught, have to be entered, together with any general remarks that the particular circumstances may demand. When the work has been completed, this information will be collected and embodied in Mr. Ayson’s report, which will be an invaluable addition to our colonial records. Mr. Ayson is wonderfully interested in his work, and so keen that he. has the rare faculty of living able to infuse some of his infectious enthusiasm into those with whom lie conies in contact. No man in New Zealand is keener on fish ami fishculture than Mr. Ayson, and one has only to chat with him for a few minutes to realist* why his department is so successful. In Mr Harry Stephenson, the genial Inspector of Fisheries at Russell, who is in

charge of the experiments in Northern waters, Mr. Ayson has a coadjutor worthy of the work, upon which he brings to bear a ripe experience and a genuine ini nt rest. SOME OF THE FISH. The homely schnapper is known to everybody. Many people think he is the only sort of fish that grows in these parts. This, however, is an error. He has many companions at the bottom of the sea, who are quite as respectable, and as succulent. It is strange how’ different fish are popular in different parts of the Dominion. Most of it is prejudice and the rest of it is custom. The tarakihi is not unlike a schnapper in shape, but more clipper built. He

has finer lines. His colouring is silvergrey with darker markings. He is a particularly lively customer, and will keep things lively on deck when all the rest of the visitors have sunk into a somnolent respectability.

Moki resembles the tarakihi somewhat, but is larger, has thicker lips, and other peculiarities which mark him from his sort of half-cousin. On the back, his sober grey is relieved with some effective splashes of primrose. The leather jacket is coloured light brown or sometimes like dark crocodile ekin. His dorsal and anal fins are of a vivid yellow, and long after he has left his native element they flutter in the sunlight. The ehonhounamu is not unlike a carp in looks. On the back he is an orange brown, shading lighter towards the bottom of the body, and he is remarkable for several transverse bands of a darker hue. Maomao is a delicate little fish, highly esteemed by the Maoris. The back fe a rich blue inclining to violet, which grows lighter on the body. He has a very small and delicate mouth. • John Dory, whose name is a corruption of the French “jaune doree” (gol■den yellow), is one of the best known fishes, partly on account of his name, ■which has a home-like, familiar sound, .■nd partly on account of the legend connected with him. The dory’s characteristics are two black spots, one on either side of the body. These mark the identical spot where St. Peter picked hint up. Everyone who knows his Scripture is aware of the fact that when St. Peter expressed some scruples about the wisdom of paying tribute, he was told to Igo to the water and take up a fish. He did so, and found a piece of money in its ■mouth. The fish was John Dory, and the finger marks of the blessed saint are to be seen on its descendants to this day. The faet that the Dory does not live in the water spoken of in holy writ proves nothing, except that faith is a fine thing, and that those that do business •by great waters have the true poetie sense. The porcupine fish was fully described in; the last article. Suffice it to say that his “tummy” is a staring white, and on top he is greenish black, with patches of bright yellow on jet black. He is studded all over with spikes like a cheveaux de frise. When he first comes out of the water he is blown up tight as a. drum, but gradually deflates till he looks like a balloon that has met with an ■accident. The pig fish roughly resembles the John Dory, but lacks the suggestion of gilt in his cuticle. As will be seen from the picture of him he is not inaptly named. FISHERMEU’S superstitions. The legend about the John Dory which, even if it might not ba admissible under the rules of evidence, is certainly picturesque, reminds one of an interesting side of the fisherman’s character—his superstitions. Sailors may be ignorant —in faet, many of them are, though naturally becoming less so owing to ths spread of knowledge—but they are seldom bigoted. Their want of knowledge runs to superstition. The sailor is too near Nature to be narrow-minded. He is brought so close to "the things that matter” that he can never be really small. When the pig fish came up in the trawl somebody remarked that it wasn't safe to mention the unclean beast on board a trawler in the North Sea. Exactly why nobody seemed to know, but the fact remained, and William, the chef de galley, gave an air of verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative by relating an experience of his own on another ship, in which he was within an ace of taking more than the regulation number of baths a day. He and the mate were in a heated argument, wnen the skipper came up, and wanted to know what all the bother was about. “I only said something about a pig,” remarked William.- “There yon are again,” screamed the mate, who was only prevented by the skipper from carrying out his threat to chuck William into the blue sea (he called it some other tint). The only way to spoil the spell cast by the use of the forbidden word is to touch something iron, and this led to a comical event on the Nora Niven herself. When she came out from England she had on board a shell-bdek from the North Sea. who was more than slightly deaf, and the rest of the officers used to play on his infirmity in a shameful

manner. At the mention of the hated name he Would reach his hand out fo> a bolt in the eabin roof just above the table, and so ward off the impending evil. Knowing this, the others would often reach up for the bolt in unison, although the conversation might be nowhere within cooee of a pig-stye, and the shell-back would hasten to join in the dive for a touch of the evil-dispeller. When it is sbsolutely necessary to refer to the animal which bears the hated name, he is spoken of as “Jack Nasty Face,” or, simply, “the Grunter." There must be some hidden reason behind this apparently trivial antipathy to “the unclean,” and one wonders the Anglo-Israelites have no pounced down upon it. Surely this repugnance to utter even the offensive name is referable to nothing less th?,n the influence of the Lost-tribe-of-Israel-ancestors of the British people. These old-time trawlers were also full of other funny superstitions; some of which are understandable, and some of which are simply Tommy rot, as “Mr. Hopkinson” remarked about the signing of the deed. If a man walked under the beam of the trawl it was a sure omen that there would be a split net —that bugbear of the fisherman. It was unlucky to touch a trawl with a broom, and so on. Some of the yarns, such as that about a man who forgot his oilskin, and who, when his wife came running down with it to a roeky point, close to which the smack must pass, went ashore and refused to go out with the fleet that trip, savour of the not unknown penchant of some men to shirk work at the slightest opportunity. INTERESTING FOLK. Sailors are always interesting. They have seen so much, and so often carried their lives in their hands that they have a different outlook on life from most people. Sailors wander over the earth so easily in their conversation. A man who has been knocking about the harbours from Archangel to the Bluff with his eyes open must naturally have something to talk about, and the sailor’s “When we were in ” is such a very different thing from the “Ah, that reminds me of when I was in ” of the half-fledged globe-trotter who has probably been across to Melbourne to see the Cup, or tlone the Sounds trip at so much a head. Listening to a sailor in a reminiscent mood is like reading that remarkably graphic bit of writing in “The Light that Failed,” where Dick takes Maisie over the world in a few short paragraphs. Some men follow the sea merely to get a living, and some men follow the sea from sheer love of it—if they cannot feel the swell of the tide and the salt spray on their faces, they might as well be confined in a dungeon. The trawling skipper, Captain Nielson, a blueeyed Dane, who has been at sea since he could toddle, is a typical example of the latter class. In his day he must have been quite a character, for his name is still a password round the East Coast of England wherever trawlers sail in and out. Wonderfully fascinating are his stories of life on the North Sea. stories of trawling, smuggling, and the hundred and one adventures that befall the men who range over that well-known sheet of water in search of a living. Much of the romance went when steam superseded the old smacks, but the men are the same, and, as long as there are seas to sail, and men to sail them, there will be stories to tell, and men to tell them. Captain McAllister has a fund of tall yarns, with a special brand for gullible officials, and unsophisticated newspaper people, reminiscent of a party of the name of Jacobs. If the Nora Niven doesn’t bring up a sea serpent before her charter is out, it won’t be Captain McAllister’s fault. ‘The chief” of the enshould have come from Scotland, but hails from Lincolnshire, also has a wellfilled kit of good stories gathered from the four quarters of ij'e globe where ho has roamed, although otill a young man. So altogether we had a very pleasant trip, and the writer was (jiore than sorry when the Nora tied up at. the wharf, and the cruise, as far as he pas concerned, was at an end. There one member of the ship’s company who -pas quite out of the common, and about whom a word in closing. This was WilliMp, the chef de galley. To judge from the huge chunk of the earth that ho was farqjliar with, William must have started out with his bundle when but n very tiny tot. Hie soldierman who had heard the revellrv from “Birr to Bareilly.” was only n circustancc to the catholicity of k»vte ex-

hibited by the chef in his perigrinations. And in his wanderings William has picked up snatches of many tongues, which he brings in at most unexpected moments. His running comments when manipulating the pots and pan.-, in his sanctum are like bits'out of the latter end of the dictionary that have got mix ed, and don’t know where to find themselves. When he eomes on deck for the first time in the morning, William will take a nautical look round the horizon, and with one eye on the top of the mast, sagely opine, “Ah, boys, got the wind on the weather side again,” and his face wrinkles up into the most cosmopolitan of smiles. He could import more into one word than any ordinary person could coax into a string of sentences. That, one word was “dinner.” There was no bell, gong, gun or steam whistle aboard th? Nora to call the hands to dinnsr meals, and the first intimation one had of the recurrence of that interesting event was William’s cheery countenance peepir.g round the cuddy door and bawling, “Dinner!” “Dinner” meant simply that it was dinner time, and that the meal awaited us in the cabin. But cook proposes and the trawl disposes. The trawl takes precedence of everything, even eating. So it sometimes fell out that William’s invitation and the wants of the net elashed, and that was William’s opportunity for the display of his remarkable talent. There were some “portmanteau” words in Lewis Carroll's delightful work, but they were mere handbags compared to our friend's. Perhaps one would respond to the gentle hint from William that he had perpetrated something extra tempting in the way of eatables. His second “entry” was the same as the first, minus the smile, and his announcement was lengthened to “Dinner!” rising by degrees to “DINNER!” This would mean (when you were familiar with the code word) that the dinner was “dished” as William called it, and that the whole bally show would be cold, and William didn’t care which way the boat went, and if his cooking was going to be spoiled like this, he would sign off as soon as the ship moored alongside the pier, and you felt that William was a very hardly used mortal. The final scene was full of what the dramatic critics call human interest, “DIN NER R-R-R R.” with about forty thousand r’s whirled up again the breeze while William assumed a George Rignold air, in full limelight, and. after looking unutterable things, retired to the recesses of the galley. The paraphrase of this, his ultimatum, is quite unprintable. 'Wandering saloonwards with an apologetic mien, the cabin folk would open the meal in a temperature reminiscent of the cool-chamber. Never in one place long. William has been all over the world, in all manner of craft, and is typical of those restless spirits who carry the name ■of Englishmen round the globe, those restless spirits, “ as a weed. Flung from the rock, on ocean's foam to sail. Where’er the surges sweep, the tempest’s breath prevail.”