Chapter II: Part 2

But probably by far the larger part of the food consumed by abysmal creatures consists of the dead bodies of animals which sink down like manna from above. The surface layers of the ocean teem with animal and vegetable life. Every yachtsman must at times have noticed that the sea is thick as a _purée_ with jelly-fish, or with those little transparent, torpedo-shaped creatures, the _Sagitta_. What he will not have noticed, unless he be a microscopist, is that at almost all times the surface is crowded with minute organisms, foraminifera, radiolaria, diatoms. These exist in quite incalculable numbers, and reproduce their kind with astounding rapidity. They are always dying, and their bodies sink downwards like a gentle rain.[1] In such numbers do they fall, that large areas of the ocean bed are covered with a thick deposit of their shells. In the shallower waters the foraminifera, with their calcareous shells, prevail, but over the deeper abysses of the ocean they take so long in falling that the calcareous shells are dissolved in the water, which contains a considerable proportion of carbonic acid gas, and their place is taken by the siliceous skeletons of the radiolarians and diatoms. Thus there is a ceaseless falling of organisms from above, and it must be from these that the dwellers of the deep ultimately obtain their food. As Mr. Kipling in his ‘Seven Seas,’ says of the deep-sea cables:

‘The wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from afar--
Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind
white sea-snakes are.’

In trying to realize the state of things at the bottom of the deep sea, it is of importance to recognize that there is a wonderful uniformity of physical conditions _là-bas_. Climate plays no part in the life of the depths; storms do not ruffle their inhabitants; these recognize no alternation of day or night; seasons are unknown to them; they experience no change of temperature. Although the abysmal depths of the polar regions might be expected to be far colder than those of the tropics, the difference only amounts to a degree or so--a difference which would not be perceptible to us without instruments of precision. The following data show how uniform temperature is at the bottom of the sea.

In June, 1883, Nordenskiöld found on the eastern side of Greenland the following temperatures: at the surface 2·2° C.; at 100 metres 5·7° C.; at 450 m. 5·1° C. In the middle of December, 1898, the German deep-sea expedition, while in the pack-ice of the Antarctic, recorded the following temperatures: at the surface -1° C.; at 100 m.-1·1° C.; at 400 m. 1·6° C.; at 1,000-1,500 m. 1·6° C.; at 4,700 m.-0·5° C. These may be compared with some records made in the Sargasso Sea by the Plankton Expedition in the month of August, when the surface registered a temperature of 24° C.; 195 m. one of 18·8° C.; 390 m. one of 14·9° C.; and 2,060 m. one of 3·8° C. It is thus clear that the temperature at the bottom of the deep sea varies but a few degrees from the freezing-point; and, whether in the tropics or around the poles, this temperature does not undergo anything like the variations to which the surface of the earth is subjected.

There are, however, some exceptions to this statement. The Mediterranean, peculiar in many respects, is also peculiar as to its bottom temperature. In August, 1881, the temperature, as taken by the _Washington_, was at the surface 26° C.; at 100 m. 14·5° C.; at 500 m. 14·1° C.; and from 2,500 m. to 3,550 m. 13·3° C. These observations agree, within one-fifth of a degree, with those recorded later by Chun in the same waters. There are also certain areas near the Sulu Islands where, with a surface temperature of 28° C., the deep sea, from 730 m. to 4,660 m., shows a constant temperature of 10·3° C.; and again, on the westerly side of Sumatra, the water, from 900 m. downwards, shows a constant temperature of 5·9° C.; whilst in the not far distant Indian Ocean it sinks at 1,300 m. to 4° C., and at 1,700 m. to 3° C. In spite of these exceptions, we may roughly say that all deep-sea animals live at an even temperature, which differs by but a few degrees from the freezing-point. Indeed, the heating effect of the sun’s rays is said not to penetrate, as a rule, further than 90 to 100 fathoms, though in the neighbourhood of the Sargasso Sea it undoubtedly affects somewhat deeper layers. In the Mediterranean the heat-rays probably do not penetrate more than 50 fathoms. Below these limits all seasonable variations cease. Summer and autumn, spring and winter, are unknown to the dwellers of the deep; and the burning sun of the tropical noonday, which heats the surface water to such a degree that the change of temperature from the lower waters to the upper proves fatal to many delicate animals when brought up from the depths, has no effect on the great mass of water below the 100-fathom line.

Again, in the depths the waters are still. A great calm reigns. The storms which churn the upper waters into tumultuous fury have but a superficial effect, and are unfelt at the depth of a few fathoms. Even the great ocean currents, such as the Gulf Stream, are but surface currents, and their influence is probably not perceptible below 200 fathoms. There are places, as the wear and tear of telegraphic cables show, where deep-sea currents have much force; but these are not common. We also know that there must be a very slow current flowing from the poles towards the Equator. This replaces the heated surface waters of the tropics, which are partly evaporated and partly driven by the trade-winds towards the poles. Were there no such current, the waters round the Equator, in spite of the low conductivity of salt water, would, in the course of ages, be heated through. But this current is almost imperceptible; on the whole, no shocks or storms disturb the peace of the oceanic abyss.

An interesting result of this is that many animals, which in shallower waters are subject to the strain and stress of tidal action or of a constant stream, and whose outline is modified by these conditions, are represented in the depths by perfectly symmetrical forms. For instance, the monaxonid sponges from the deep sea have a symmetry as perfect as a lily’s, whilst their allies from the shallower seas, subject as they are to varying tides and currents, are of every variety of shape, and their only common feature is that none of them are symmetrical. This radial symmetry is especially marked in the case of sessile animals, those whose ‘strength is to sit still,’ attached by their base to some rock or stone, or rooted by a stalk into the mud. Such animals cannot move from place to place, and, like an oyster, are dependent for their food on such minute organisms as are swept towards them in the currents set by the action of their cilia. A curious and entirely contrary effect is produced by this stillness on certain animals, which, without being fixed, are, to say the least, singularly inert. The sea-cucumbers or holothurians, which can be seen lying still as sausages in any shallow sub-tropical waters, are nevertheless rolled over from time to time, and present now one, now another, surface to the bottom. These have retained the five-rayed symmetry, which is so eminently characteristic of the group Echinoderma, to which they belong. But the holothurians in the deep sea, where nothing rolls them about, continue throughout life to present the same surface to the bottom; and these have developed a secondary bilateral symmetry, so that, like a worm or a lobster, they have definite upper and lower surfaces. These bilateral holothurians first became known by the dredgings of the _Challenger_, and formed one of the most important additions to our knowledge of marine zoology for which we are indebted to that expedition.

At the bottom of the sea there is no sound--

‘There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep,
Or the great grey level plains of ooze where the shell-burred
cables creep.’

The world down there is cold and still and noiseless. Nevertheless, many of the animals of the depths have organs to which by analogy an auditory function has been assigned. But it must not be forgotten that even in the highest land-vertebrates the ear has two functions. It is at once the organ of hearing and of balancing. Part of the internal ear is occupied with orientating the body. By means of it we can tell whether we are keeping upright, going uphill or descending, turning to the right or to the left; and it is probably this function which is the chief business of the so-called ears of marine animals. Professor Huxley once said that, unless one became a crayfish, one could never be sure what the mental processes of a crayfish were. This is doubtless true; but experiment has shown, both in crayfishes and cuttlefishes, that, if the auditory organ be interfered with or injured, the animal loses its sense of direction and staggers hither and thither like a drunken man. It is obvious that animals which move about at the bottom require such balancing organs quite as much as those which skim the surface, and it is in no wise remarkable that such organs should be found in those dwellers in the deep which move from place to place.

If we could descend to the depths and look about us, we should find the bottom of the sea near the land carpeted with deposits washed down from the shore and carried out to sea by rivers, and dotted over with the remains of animals and plants which inhabit shoal waters. This deposit, derived from the land, extends to a greater or less distance around our coast-line. In places this distance is very considerable. The Congo is said to carry its characteristic mud 600 miles out to sea, and the Ganges and the Indus to carry theirs 1,000 miles; but sooner or later we should pass beyond the region of coast mud and river deposit, the seaward edge of which is the ‘mud-line’ of Sir John Murray.

When we get beyond the mud-line, say a hundred miles from the Irish or American coast, we should find that the character of the sea-bottom has completely changed. Here we should be on Rudyard Kipling’s ‘great grey level plains of ooze.’ All around us would stretch a vast dreary level of greyish-white mud, due to the tireless fall of the minute globigerina shells mentioned above. This rain of foraminifera is ceaseless, and serves to cover rock and stone alike. It is probably due to this chalky deposit that so many members of the ‘Benthos’--a term used by Haeckel to denote those marine animals which do not swim about or float, but which live on the bottom of the ocean either fixed or creeping about--are stalked. Many of them, whose shoal-water allies are without a pedicel, are provided with stalks; and those whose shallow-water congeners are stalked are, in the depths, provided with still longer stalks. Numerous sponges--the alcyonarian _Umbellula_, the stalked ascidians, and, above all, the stalked crinoids--exemplify this point.

Flat as the Sahara, and with the same monotony of surface, these great plains stretch across the Atlantic, dotted here and there with a yet uncovered stone or rock dropped by a passing iceberg. In the deeper regions of the ocean--where, as we have already seen, occasional pits and depressions occur, and great ridges arise to vex the souls of the cable-layers--the globigerina ooze is replaced by the less soluble siliceous shells of the radiolarians and diatoms. The former are largely found in pits in the Pacific, the latter in the Southern Seas. But there is a third deposit which occurs in the deeper parts of the ocean--the red clay. This is often partly composed of the empty siliceous shells just mentioned; but over considerable areas of the Pacific the number of these shells is very small, and here it would seem that the red clay is largely composed of the ‘horny fragments of dead surface-living animals, of volcanic and meteoric dust, and of small pieces of water-logged pumice-stone.’ On whichever deposit we found ourselves, could we but see the prospect, we should be struck with the monotony of a scene as different as can well be imagined from the variegated beauty of a rock-pool or a coral island lagoon.

There is, however, an abundance of animal life. The dredge reveals a surprising variety and wealth of form. Sir John Murray records ‘at station 146 in the Southern Ocean, at a depth of 1,375 fathoms, that 200 specimens captured belonged to 59 genera and 78 species.’ He further states that this was ‘probably the most successful haul, as regards number, variety, novelty, size, and beauty of the specimens,’ up to the date of the dredging; but even this was surpassed by the captures from the depths at station 147. The Southern Ocean is particularly well populated. The same writer says: ‘The deep-sea fauna of the Antarctic has been shown by the _Challenger_ to be exceptionally rich, a much larger number of species having been obtained than in any other region visited by the expedition; and the _Valdivia’s_ dredgings, in 1898, confirm this.’ There seems to be no record of such a wealth of species in depths of less than 50 fathoms, and we are justified in the belief that the great depths are extremely rich in species.

The peculiar conditions under which the Benthos live have had a marked influence on their structure. Representatives of nearly all the great divisions of the animal kingdom which occur in the sea are found in the depths. Protozoa, sponges, cœlenterata, round-worms, annelids, crustacea, polyzoa, brachiopoda, molluscs, echinoderms, ascidians, fishes, crowd the sea-bottom. The _Valdivia_ has brought home even deep-sea ctenophores and sagittas, forms hitherto associated only with life at the surface. The same expedition also secured adult examples of the wonderful free-swimming holothurian, _Pelagothuria ludwigi_, which so curiously mimics a jelly-fish. It was taken in a closing-net at 400 to 500 fathoms near the Seychelles. Most of these animals bear their origin stamped on their structure, so that a zoologist can readily pick out from a miscellaneous collection of forms those which have a deep-sea home. We have already referred to a certain ‘stalkiness,’ which lifts the fixed animals above the slowly deepening ooze. Possibly the long-knobbed tentacles of the deep-sea jelly-fish, _Pectis_, on the tips of which it is thought the creature moves about, may be connected with the same cause. The great calm of the depths and its effect upon the symmetry of the body have also been mentioned; but greater in its effect on the bodies of the dwellers in the ocean abysses is the absence of sunlight.

No external rays reach the bottom of the sea, and what light there is must be supplied by the phosphorescent organs of the animals themselves, and must be faint and intermittent. A large percentage of animals taken from the deep sea show phosphorescence when brought on deck; and it may be that this emission of light is much greater at a low temperature, and under a pressure of 1 to 2 tons on the square inch, than it is under the ordinary atmospheric conditions of the surface. The simplest form which these phosphorescent organs take is that of certain skin-glands which secrete a luminous slime. Such a slime is cast off, according to Filhol, by many of the annelids; and a similar light-giving fluid is exuded from certain glands at the base of the antenna and elsewhere in some of the deep-sea shrimps. But the most highly developed of the organs which produce light are the curious eye-like lanterns which form one or more rows along the bodies of certain fishes, notably of members of the Stomiadæ, a family allied to the salmons. From head to tail the miniature bull’s-eyes extend, like so many portholes lit up, with sometimes one or two larger organs in front of the eyes, like the port and starboard lanterns of a ship, so that when one of these fishes swims swiftly across the dim scene it must, to quote Kipling again, recall a liner going past ‘like a grand hotel.’ Sometimes the phosphorescent organ is at the tip of a barbel or tentacle, and it is interesting to note that the angler-fish of the deep sea has replaced its white lure, conspicuous in shallow water, but invisible in the dark, by a luminous process, the investigation of which leads many a creature into the enormous, toothed mouth of the fish.

A peculiar organ, known by the name ‘phæodaria,’ exists in the body of certain radiolarians found only in the deep seas. It has been suggested that this structure gives forth light; and, if this be the case, the floor of the ocean is strewn with minute glow-lamps, which perhaps give forth as much light as the surface of the sea on a calm summer’s night. There is, however, much indirect evidence that, except for these intermittent sources, the abysses of the ocean are sunk in an impenetrable gloom.

When physical conditions change, living organisms strive to adapt themselves to the changed conditions. Hence, when the inhabitants of the shallower waters made their way into the darker deeps, many of them, in the course of generations, increased the size of their eyes until they were out of all proportion to their other sense-organs. Others gave up the contest on these lines, and set about replacing their visual organs by long tactile tentacles or feelers, which are extraordinarily sensitive to external impressions. Like the blind, they endeavour to compensate for loss of sight by increased tactile perception; and in these forms the eyes are either dwindling or have quite disappeared. An instance in point is supplied by the crustacea, many of whom have not only lost their eyes, but have also lost the stalk which bore them; but amongst the crustacea some genera, such as _Bathynomus_, have enormous eyes with as many as four thousand facets. It is noticeable that this creature has its eyes directed downwards toward the ground and not upwards, as is the case with its nearest allies. On the whole the crustacea lose their eyes more readily, and at a less depth, than fishes. Many of the latter--_e.g._, _Ipnops_--are blind, and in others the eyes seem to be disappearing. Thus, amongst the deep-sea cod, _Macrurus_, those which frequent the waters down to about 1,000 fathoms, have unusually large eyes, whilst those which go down to the deeper abysses have very small ones. Many of the animals which have retained their eyes carry them at the end of processes. Chun, in his brilliant account of the voyage of the _Valdivia_, has figured a series of fishes whose eyes stand out from the head like a pair of binoculars; and similar ‘telescope’ eyes, as he calls them, occur on some of the eight-armed cuttle-fish. The larva of one of the fishes has eyes at the end of two stalks, each of which measures quite one-fourth of the total length of the body.

The colour of the deep-sea creatures also indicates the darkness of their habitat. Like cave-dwelling animals, or the lilac forced in Parisian cellars, many of them are blanched and pale; but this is by no means always the case. There is, in fact, no characteristic hue for the deep-sea fauna. Many of the fishes are black, and many show the most lovely metallic sheen. Burnished silver and black give a somewhat funereal, but very tasteful appearance to numbers of deep-sea fish. Others are ornamented with patches of shining copper, which, with their blue eyes, form an agreeable variety in their otherwise sombre appearance. Many of the fishes, however, present a gayer clothing. Some are violet, others pale rose or bright red. Others have a white almost translucent skin, through which the blood can be seen and its course traced even in its finer vessels. Purples and greens abound amongst the holothurians; other echinoderms are white, yellow, pink, or red. Red is, perhaps, the predominant colour of the crustacea, though it has been suggested that this colour is produced during the long passage to the surface, and that some of the bright reds which we see at the surface are unknown in the depths. Violet and orange, green and red, are the colours of the jelly-fishes and the corals.

It thus appears that there is a great variety and a great brilliancy amongst many of the bottom fauna. With the exception of blue, all colours are well represented; but the consideration of one or two facts seems to show that colour plays little part in their lives. Apart from the fact that to our eyes, at any rate, these gorgeous hues would be invisible in the depths, it is difficult to imagine that each of these gaily-coloured creatures can live amongst surroundings of its own hue. Again, it is characteristic that the colour is uniform. There is a marked absence of those stripes, bands, spots, or shading which play so large a part in the protective coloration of animals exposed to light. Although there is no protective coloration amongst the animals of the deep sea, the luminous organs, which make, for instance, some of the cuttlefishes as beautiful and as conspicuous as a firework, may, in some cases, act as warning signals. Having once established a reputation for nastiness, the more conspicuous an animal can make itself the less likely is it to be interfered with. One peculiarity connected with pigment, as yet inexplicable, is the fact that, in deep-sea animals, many of the cavities of the body are lined with a dark or, more usually, a black epithelium. The mouth, pharynx, and respiratory channels, and even the visceral cavity, of _Bathysaurus_ and _Ipnops_, and indeed of all really deep-sea fishes, are black. It can be of no use to any animal to be black inside; and the only explanation hitherto given is that the deposit of pigment is the expression of some modification in the excretory processes of the abysmal fishes.

It was mentioned above that the absence of eyes is to some extent compensated by the great extension of feelers and antennæ. Many of the jelly-fishes have long free tentacles radiating in all directions; the rays of the ophiuroids are prolonged; the arms of the cuttle-fish are capable of enormous extension. The antennæ of the crustacea stretch widely through the water, and, in _Aristoeopsis_, cover a radius of about five times the body-length. In _Nematocarcinus_ the walking-legs are elongated to almost the same extent; and this crustacean steps over the sea-bottom with all the delicacy of Agag. The curious arachnid-like pycnogonids have similarly elongated legs, and move about, like the ‘harvestmen’ or the ‘daddy-long-legs,’ with each foot stretched far from the body, acting as a kind of outpost. The fishes, too, show extraordinary outgrowths of this kind. The snout may be elongated till the jaws have the proportions of a pair of scissor-blades, each armed with rows of terrible teeth; or long barbels, growing out from around the mouth, sway to and fro in the surrounding water. In other cases the fins are drawn out into long streamers. All these eccentricities give the deep-sea fishes a bizarre appearance; their purpose is plainly to act as sensory outposts, warning their possessor of the presence of enemies or of the vicinity of food.

All deep-sea animals are of necessity carnivorous, and probably many of them suffer from an abiding hunger. Many of the fishes have enormous jaws, the angle of the mouth being situated at least one-third of the body-length from the anterior end. The gape is prodigious, and as the edge of the mouth is armed with recurved teeth, food once entering has little chance of escape. So large is the mouth that these creatures can swallow other fish bulkier than themselves; and certain eels have been brought to the surface which have performed this feat, the prey hanging from beneath them in a sac formed of the distended stomach and body-wall. It has been said of the desert fauna that ‘perhaps there never was a life so nurtured in violence, so tutored in attack and defence as this. The warfare is continuous from the birth to the death.’ The same words apply equally to the depths of the ocean. There, perhaps, more than anywhere else, is true the Frenchman’s description of life as the conjugation of the verb ‘I eat,’ with its terrible correlative, ‘I am eaten.’

Connected with the alimentary tract, though in some fishes shut off from it, is the air-bladder, an organ which contains air secreted from the blood, and which, amongst other functions, serves to keep the fish the right side up. The air can be reabsorbed, and is no doubt, to some extent, controlled by muscular effort; but there are times when this air-bladder is a source of danger to deep-sea fishes. When they leave the depths for shallower water, where the pressure is diminished, the air-bladder begins to expand; and, should this expansion pass beyond the control of the animal, the air-bladder will act as a balloon, and the fish will continue to rise with a rate of ascension which increases as the pressure lessens. Eventually the fish reaches the surface in a state of terrible distortion, with half its interior hanging out of its mouth. Many such victims of levitation have been picked up at sea, and from them we learnt something about deep-sea fishes before the self-closing dredge came into use.

One peculiarity of the abysmal fauna, which, to some extent, is a protection against the cavernous jaws mentioned above, is a certain ‘spininess’ which has developed even amongst genera that are elsewhere smooth. Such specific names as _spinosus_, _spinifer_, _quadrispinosum_, are very common in lists of deep-sea animals, and testify to the wide prevalence of this form of defence. A similar spiny character is, however, found in many polar species, even in those of comparatively shallow water; and it may be that this feature is a product of low temperature and not of low level. The same applies to the large size which certain animals attain in the depths. For instance, in the Arctic and Antarctic Seas the isopodous crustacea, which upon our coasts scarcely surpass an inch in length, grow to nine or ten inches, with bodies as big as moderate-sized lobsters. The gigantic hydroid polyps, _e.g._, _Monocaulus imperator_ of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, illustrate the same tendency; and so do the enormous single spicules, several feet long and as thick as one’s little finger, of the sponge _Monorhaphis_. Amongst other floating molluscs at great depths, chiefly pteropods, the _Valdivia_ captured a gigantic _Carinaria_ over two feet in length. Of even greater zoological interest were giant specimens of the _Appendicularia_, which were taken at between 1,100 and 1,200 fathoms. This creature, named by Chun, _Bathochordæus charon_, reaches a length of about five inches, and has in its tail a notochord as big as a lamprey’s. All other genera of this group are minute, almost microscopic.

There are two other peculiarities common amongst the deep-sea fauna which are difficult to explain. One is a curious inability to form a skeleton of calcareous matter. The bones of many abysmal fishes are deficient in lime, and are fibrous or cartilaginous in composition. Their scales, too, are thin and membranous, their skin soft and velvety. The shells of deep-sea molluscs are as thin and translucent as tissue-paper; and the same is true of some brachiopods. The test of the echinoderms is often soft, and the armour of the crustacea is merely chitinous, unhardened by deposits of lime. Calcareous sponges are altogether unknown in the depths. This inability to form a hard skeleton--curiously enough this does not apply to corals--is not due to any want of calcareous salts in the bottom waters. It is known that calcium sulphate, from which animals secrete their calcium carbonate, exists in abundance; but those animals which dwell on the calcareous globigerina ooze are as soft and yielding as those which have their home on the siliceous radiolarian deposits. Animals which form a skeleton of silex do not suffer from the same inability; in fact, the deep-sea radiolarians often have remarkably stout skeletons, whilst the wonderful siliceous skeletons of the hexactinellid sponges are amongst the most beautiful objects brought up from the depths.

The second peculiarity, for which there seems no adequate reason, is the reduction and diminution in size of the respiratory organs. Amongst the crustacea, the ascidians, and the fishes this is especially marked. The gill laminæ are reduced in number and in size; and the evidence all points to the view that this simplification is not primitive but acquired, being brought about in some way by the peculiar conditions of life at great depths.

When the first attempts were made to explore the bed of the ocean, it was hoped that the sea would give up many an old-world form; that animals, known to us only as fossils, might be found lurking in the abysmal recesses of the deep; and that many a missing link would be brought to light. This has hardly proved to be the case. In certain groups animals hitherto known only as extinct, such as the stalked crinoids and certain crustacea--_e.g._, the Eryonidæ--have been shown to be still extant. The remarkable _Cephalodiscus_ and _Rhabdopleura_, with their remote vertebrate affinities, have been dragged from their dark retreats. Haeckel regards certain of the deep-sea medusæ as archaic, and perhaps the same is true of the ascidians and holothurians; but, on the whole, the deep-sea fauna cannot be regarded as older than the other faunas of the seas. The hopes that were cherished of finding living ichthyosauri or plesiosauri, or the Devonian ganoid fishes, or at least a trilobite, or some of those curious fossil echinoderms, the cystoids and blastoids, must be given up. Certain of the larger groups peculiar to the deep sea have probably been there since remote times; but many of the inhabitants of the deep belong to the same families, and even to the same genera, as their shallow-water allies, and have probably descended in more recent times. There, in the deep dark stillness of the ocean bed, unruffled by secular change, they have developed and are developing new modifications and new forms, which are as characteristic of the deep sea as an Alpine fauna is of the mountain heights.

BRITISH SEA-FISHERIES

ἂγει
...πόντου τ' εἰναλίαν ϕύσιν σπείραισι δικτυοκλώστοις,
περιϕραδἠς ἀνήρ.
SOPHOCLES: _Antigone_.

To contemplate all the legislation concerning English sea-fishing and the administration of this vast industry during the last century is alike to bewilder the reason and to fatigue the patience. The industry is an enormous one, and of the utmost value to the dwellers in these islands. At the present time there are over 27,000 vessels, manned by more than 90,000 seamen, fishing from the ports of Great Britain. They land over 900,000 tons of fish, worth some £10,000,000, during the year. In addition to the fishermen who remove the fish from the sea, a considerable population of packers, curers, coopers, hawkers, etc., is employed. For instance, out of the 20,000 hands employed in the Shetland herring-fishery summer of 1906, 11,000 have been at sea, and 9,120, of whom 7,560 were women, have been employed on shore, not to mention the large number of railway employés who are engaged in the transport of a very perishable article. Apart from the material interests of the trade (the capital invested in steamers, sailing-boats, and gear of all kinds being estimated at more than £11,000,000), the fishing industry is of great importance to the country as a training-ground for sailors and marine engineers, and as affording a means of livelihood to a vigorous and an independent population.

Like any other industry, and--because the life-history of the inhabitants of the sea is still so obscure--perhaps more than any other industry, sea-fishing is liable to arbitrary fluctuations. There was, for instance, a partial failure in the herring-fishery in the summer of 1906 on the north and north-east of the Shetlands. The total number of crans landed was 438,950, as against 632,000 in 1905, a record year; and some of the Shetlanders have been hard put to it to live. Such a failure sets thinking those whose livelihood is threatened; but fishermen, although keen observers in what immediately concerns them, are not widely educated men, and cannot take into account in estimating causes, the many factors of the problems, some of which usually escape even the most talented of marine biologists. Fishermen seek a sign, usually an obvious one; in the present case, the bad season was attributed to the presence of certain Norwegian whaling companies, which a few years ago established themselves in the Shetlands and are destroying the common rorqual, the lesser rorqual, Sibbald’s rorqual, the cachalot, the humpbacked whale, and more rarely the Atlantic right-whale. These are killed for their blubber; the flesh is made into sausages, largely consumed in Central Europe; and the bones are ground up for manure.

It is, however, doubtful if whaling is in any way responsible for the scarcity of the herrings. According to the evidence collected by Mr. Donald Crawford’s Committee on this subject in 1904, it would appear that practically the only point on which the fishermen were then agreed was that the spouting of the whales was often a good guide as to the position of the herring-shoals. But the whales do not bring the herrings; and the fishermen are not even agreed that they serve to concentrate them. It is probable that the general migrations and shoaling habits of the herrings are far more dependent on the physical character of the water--a relation which is particularly clear, as the international investigations have already shown, in areas where sharply contrasted ocean-currents are constantly striving for the mastery as they are in the neighbourhood of the Shetland Isles. The hydrographical bulletin of the International Council recorded a distinctly lower temperature for the Atlantic current between Iceland and Scotland at the beginning of the year 1906 than at the corresponding season of 1903, 1904, or 1905; and an unusually low temperature has been characteristic of the Shetland waters throughout the summer of 1906. The Gulf Stream could more justly be blamed for the comparative failure of the Shetland fishery in 1906 than the Norwegian whalers, whose operations have probably done no more injury to the herring-fishery than they did in 1905 or the year before. Such failures are often real disasters to a seafaring population--a race who are, as a rule, of small versatility and unable to turn readily to new trades. Their occurrence usually provokes a cry for legislation.

Such an outcry is in this country usually met by the appointment of a Commission, or of a special Parliamentary Committee. Seventeen such inquiries into sea-fisheries have been held since Queen Victoria came to the throne, an average of one every four years. The usual process is gone through; a certain number of more or less influential gentlemen (one of them perhaps an expert) are given a ‘wide reference,’ and they proceed to take evidence. An energetic secretary, usually a young barrister, collects facts; a great number of witnesses, like Mrs. Wititterly, ‘express an immense variety of opinions on an immense variety of subjects.’ These are written down and printed; and the Commissioners, with the aid of the energetic secretary, seek to distil wisdom out of the printed evidence of the multitude, and base on it their recommendations. Legislation is sometimes recommended; but in the case of the sea-fisheries of this country it has, perhaps fortunately, seldom followed the presentation of any of these reports.

It seems, indeed, that the time is hardly yet ripe for deep-sea fishery legislation, much as it may be needed; and the reason is that our knowledge of the questions involved, although rapidly increasing, is still too deficient to form a sound basis for law-making. We propose to confine our attention mainly to the North Sea, and, from another point of view, mainly to the English fishing authorities, as opposed to those of Scotland and Ireland, in each of which countries the fishing industry is controlled by a separate Board. The fundamental and central question to be settled is whether there is a diminution in the fish generally, or in any particular species of food-fish in the North Sea area, by far the most productive of our fishing-grounds. If the answer is affirmative, we may ask, What is the cause of this diminution? and, How can it be arrested?

In 1863 Professor Huxley, Mr. (afterwards Sir) J. Caird, and Mr. G. Shaw Lefevre were constituted a Royal Commission to inquire--(1) whether or not the value of the fisheries was increasing, stationary, or decreasing; (2) whether or not the existing methods of fishing did permanent harm to the fishing-grounds; and (3) whether or not the existing legislation was necessary. Three years later the Commission reported; and their Report forms an important milestone on the road of English fishery administration.

Since 1866 great progress has been made in our knowledge of the life-history of food-fishes; yet even to-day we are hardly in a position to answer the questions set to Professor Huxley and his colleagues. At that time nothing was known about the eggs or spawn of the food-fishes. Even while the Commission was sitting, in 1864, Professor G. O. Sars for the first time discovered and described the floating ova of the cod, and succeeded in artificially fertilizing the ova and rearing the young. The following year he did the same with the mackerel; and Professor Malm of Göteborg about this time obtained and fertilized the eggs of the flounder. Since that time we have found out the eggs of all the valuable food-fish, and artificially hatched most of them. But the facts about the cod’s eggs appear to have been unknown to the Commission. They had to rely upon such data as the return of fish carried by the railway companies, the current prices of fish in the market, the return on the capital invested, and the impressions of leading merchants and fishermen. They had little scientific knowledge of sea-fisheries to guide them, for the knowledge scarcely existed; and they had no trustworthy statistics. Nevertheless, as was usually the case when Professor Huxley was concerned, they arrived at very definite conclusions--conclusions which subsequent writers have felt to be, for the time when they were formulated, sound. There was no doubt that at that date, both in Scotland and in England, the fisheries were improving; the number and the value of the fish landed at our fishing-ports were annually increasing; the capital invested in the industry yielded a satisfactory return.

The Commissioners strongly opposed the bounty system, which had done so much to build up the herring-fisheries in Scotland. They recommended the policy of opening the ports and the territorial waters to foreign seamen. They regarded the sea as free to all, just as the International Congress of Lawyers in the autumn of 1906 declared the air to be. They found no reason to believe that the supply of fish was diminishing. They were aware of the enormous destruction, especially of immature fish, consequent upon the methods of fishing, but regarded this destruction as infinitesimal compared with what normally goes on in Nature, and held that it did no permanent harm to the fisheries. They recommended that all laws regulating fishing in the open seas should be repealed, and, with two exceptions, that similar laws dealing with inshore fisheries should also be repealed; and they suggested that an Act should be passed dealing with the policing of the seas. The Sea Fisheries Act of 1868 carried these recommendations into effect, removed from the Statute-book over fifty Acts, some dating back for centuries, and rendered it possible for a fisherman to earn his living ‘how, when, and where he pleased.’

But since 1868 much has changed. Beam-trawls continued to be increasingly used down to 1893, since which date they have been replaced, in steam-trawlers, by the more powerful otter-trawl. There has been an immense increase in the employment of steam-vessels. In 1883 the number of steamers was 225, with a tonnage of 6,654 tons; in 1892 the steamers numbered 627, with a tonnage of 28,271. During the same time the number of first-class sailing-vessels had sunk from 8,058 to 7,319, whilst the tonnage was practically stationary--244,097 tons in 1883, as compared with 244,668 tons in 1892. The introduction of the use of ice, which took place about 1850, and the invention of various methods of renewing and aerating the water in the fish-tanks, enabled the boats to remain much longer on the fishing-grounds, and to waste much less time in voyaging to and from the ports where the fish is landed. Further, the time spent on the grounds was appreciably lengthened by the employment of ‘carriers,’ which collect the fish from the fleet of trawlers and carry it to port. This process of ‘fleeting,’ as it is called, at first confined to the sailing-smacks, is still used by the large Hull fleets of steam-trawlers which provide Billingsgate and more recently, Hull, itself with daily supplies of trawled fish fresh from the fishing-grounds. There has also been a great growth in dock and other accommodation.

With the tendency to use larger vessels and more complex machinery came the tendency to form companies and syndicates. The fisherman ceased to own his boat, and now retains at best a share in it. The increase in size of both the vessel and the gear necessitates increased intricacy in the operations of fishing and increased specialization on the part of the hands. The old fishing community, whose fathers and grandfathers have been fishers, is disappearing before the advance of modern economic forces. The fishing-village is turning into the cheap seaside resort.

The scene of operations of the North Sea fisherman is by no means limited to the area in the map over which the two words wander. Roughly, for purposes of definition, we may say that a North Sea fisherman is one who lands his fish at an eastern port. Should he do so at a southern or western port, even though he hail from Lowestoft or Scarborough, he temporarily ceases, for our purpose, to be a North Sea fisherman. The North Sea codmen work along the Orkneys, the Shetland and Faröe Islands, Rockall and Iceland. The fishing-grounds of East Coast trawlers now range from Iceland and the White Sea to the coasts of Portugal and Morocco. Boats have gradually made their way along the Continental coasts on the eastern side of the North Sea, opening up, about the year 1868, the grounds to the north of the Horn reef off the Danish coast. In this direction, as in the Icelandic grounds, the pioneers have been the codmen and the ‘liners,’ who catch their fish on hooks attached to long lines--sometimes seven miles in length and carrying 7,000 hooks--which are lowered to near the bottom and attached to buoys. The ‘liners’ also first exploited the more central portions of the North Sea, fishing the great Fisher Bank for many years before the appearance there, about thirty years ago, of the trawlers, who have only used it as a winter-ground since about 1885. It was not until about 1891 that trawlers visited the Icelandic grounds.

In spite of the increase in the area of the fishing-ground which took place in the last century, the intensity of the fishing has more than kept up with the new areas exploited. Professor Huxley’s Commission held the view that not only were there as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, but that the fish were as many and as large as before, and that there was no reason to suppose their number would diminish. Indeed, when we consider that an unfertilized fish-egg is rarely found in the sea, and that, according to Dr. Fulton, of the Fishery Board for Scotland, the female turbot produces annually 8,600,000 eggs, the cod 4,500,000, the haddock 450,000, the plaice 300,000, the flounder 1,400,000, the sole 570,000, whilst the herring has to be content with the comparatively meagre total of 31,000, optimism seems permissible. On the other hand, the reflection that, if the stock of cod remains about constant, only two out of the 8,600,000 ova attain maturity, gives some idea of the destructive forces at work.

The eggs are expelled into water, whilst a male is ‘standing by,’ fertilized in the water, and (except in the case of the herring, whose eggs sink) those of the chief food-fishes float to the surface, where they pass the first stages of their development. Except, again in the case of the herring, which has definitely localized spawning-grounds, there has hitherto been little trustworthy evidence as to the existence either of stereotyped spawning migrations or of very definite breeding-grounds in the case of the chief food-fishes. The great Lofoten cod-fishery in spring is based on such a migration, as it is at this time of the year that the cod approach the coast in dense shoals for spawning purposes. During the summer, after the spawning is over, the cod disappear northwards. But with respect to the spawning habits of fishes in the waters most frequented by British fishermen we know little more than that the greater number of fish spawn in relatively deep water and at some distance from land. Light will doubtless be thrown upon this problem by the international investigations now in progress. The brilliant discovery by the Danish investigators of immense numbers of the fry of the common eel in the deep water of the Atlantic, west of Ireland, and the absence of the eggs and fry from the North Sea and Baltic, render it practically certain that the countless hordes of eels which leave the rivers of North Western Europe in autumn migrate to the ocean for spawning purposes; and, more remarkable still, that the delicate young elvers which enter the same streams in autumn have already overcome the perils of their long return migration.

Before considering the evidence for the existence of a progressive impoverishment of the fishing-grounds, it should be recorded that the Trawling Commission of 1885 held that the increase of trawling had led to a scarcity of fish in the inshore waters; and that to get good catches it was necessary to go farther to sea. Eight years later, the Select Committee of 1893 held that ‘a considerable diminution [had] occurred among the more valuable classes of flat-fish, especially among soles and plaice’; and that of 1900 reported that ‘the subject of the diminution of the fish-supply is a very pressing one, and that the situation is going from bad to worse.’

The evidence which induced this change of view rests partly on experiment, partly on statistics. Although the new view may be correct, none of the older sources of evidence are altogether satisfactory. One charge which used to be made against the trawl--that it destroyed the fish-spawn--has been disproved. The ova of all the prime food-fish, as we have seen, with the exception of those of the herring, float on the surface; and the herring is a fish that shows no sign of diminishing in number. In 1886 the Scottish Fishery Board began experiments to determine whether the number and size of fish were diminishing on a certain limited area or not. The Firth of Forth and St. Andrews Bay were closed against commercial trawling, and divided into stations. Once a month the ship employed by the Board visited each station and trawled over a given area. The fish taken were counted and measured. For the first few years the results indicated an increase of food-fish; but, taking a longer period and considering the flat-fishes alone, we find that the numbers of plaice and lemon-sole taken sank from 29,869 for the five years 1885-1890, to 28,044 for the five years 1891-1895. On the other hand, the dab, a comparatively worthless fish, had increased from 19,825 to 29,483.

These figures, it is true, have not been generally accepted as an exact measure of the changes which took place during the period investigated; but independent criticism has corroborated their general tendency. It looks as if protection had been encouraging the wrong sort--a process not unknown elsewhere. The explanation possibly lies in the facts adduced by Dr. Fulton that the plaice and lemon-soles spawn only in the deep water outside the closed areas, where they are subject to continuous fishing, with the apparent result of a decrease in the number of eggs and fry inshore; whilst the dabs spawn to a large extent in the protected waters, and many of them in the offshore waters are able, in consequence of their small size, to escape through the meshes of the commercial trawl, even when mature.

Two further experiments, carried out in 1890 and 1901 by the Scottish Fishery Board and the Marine Biological Association respectively, showed for the first time that the annual harvest of a given area bears a much larger proportion to the stock of fish than had been previously supposed. These were experiments with marked fish, designed originally to trace their migrations. Out of more than 1,200 plaice liberated in the Firth of Forth and St. Andrews Bay, more than 10 per cent. were recovered almost exclusively by hook and line. Owing to these waters being closed against trawlers, there is reason to believe that the number actually recaptured by trawl and line together was very much greater. Again, out of more than 400 marked plaice liberated on the Torbay fishing-grounds, 27 per cent. of those liberated in the bay, and 35 per cent. of those set free on the offshore grounds, were recaptured by trawlers.

The evidence derived from statistics has hitherto been, in many respects, unsatisfactory. In spite of the recommendations of more than one Royal Commission, nothing was done towards a systematic collection of fishery statistics until the late Duke of Edinburgh, at a conference held at the Fisheries Exhibition of 1883, happened to read a paper on some statistics collected by coastguards as to the quantity and quality of fish landed. This paper being sent to the Board of Trade, ‘it was decided to establish a collection of fishery statistics for England and Wales on the same lines, and generally by the same machinery, as has been recommended by His Royal Highness.’ Unfortunately, neither the lines nor the machinery have proved sound. The officials have also been hampered by want of funds. The Treasury offered £500 (afterwards increased to £700) a year for statistical purposes--a totally inadequate sum when distributed as wages among the 157 ‘collectors’ scattered round our coasts. The duties of these collectors were to send monthly returns of thirteen different kinds of ‘wet fish’ and three kinds of shellfish, stating the quantities landed and the market value at the port. They had no powers to demand information from anyone, or to examine books or catches or market-and railway-returns; and they were subject to but little if any supervision.

Not only were these statistics untrustworthy, even as a simple record of the quantities of fish landed, but they were rendered practically useless for exact inquiries concerning the decline of the fisheries, through the neglect of any precautions to discriminate between the catches in the home waters and those on distant fishing-grounds of a totally different character. Fish from Iceland, Faröe, and the Bay of Biscay, as these areas were successively exploited, all went to swell the totals in the single column of ‘fish landed,’ thus rendering it quite impossible to determine the state of the fishery on the older fishing-grounds around our coasts. Taking the statistics as they stand, however, we find that during 1886-1888 the average quantity of fish annually landed on the coasts of England and Wales amounted to 6,263,000 cwt., valued at £3,805,000; during 1890-1892, 6,184,000 cwt., valued at £4,496,000; during 1900-1902, 9,242,000 cwt., valued at £6,543,000.

The average price of fish per cwt. in these periods was consequently 12s. 2d. in 1886-1888, 14s. 6½d. in 1890-1892, and 14s. 3½d. in 1900-1902. The census returns indicate that the population of England and Wales had risen in the meantime from about 28,000,000 in 1887 to 29,000,000 in 1891, and 32½ millions in 1901. We thus see that the people were steadily increasing their expenditure on fish, viz., from 2s. 9d. per head in 1887 to 3s. 1d. in 1891, and to 4s. per head in 1901. The quantity consumed amounted to 25 lb. per head in 1887, 23·9 lb. in 1891, and 38·8 lb. in 1901.

To appreciate the significance of these figures it is necessary to bear in mind that, prior to 1891, the fishing was mostly prosecuted in the North Sea and in the immediate neighbourhood of our coasts. During this period the price rose 20 per cent. and the supply fell--facts which indicate with tolerable certainty that the yield of the older fishing-grounds had reached its limits, if it was not actually declining. But in the following decade the conditions were reversed; the supply increased 50 per cent., and the price fell 3d. per cwt. This was the period of rapid increase in the number of steam-trawlers, of the exploitation of new fishing-grounds in distant waters, and of a great expansion of the herring-fishery.