Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1882-06-08
The Yarmouth Herring Fishery.

The industry is great in every sense OF
the word. Over three million dollars,
or six hundred thousand pounds, is in
vested in it; it employs more than one
thousand vessels and eight thousand
men, and the late Frank auckland COM
puted that the herrings caught in one
year would be sufficient to make four
teen meals for every man, woman, and
child in the United Kingdom. The her
ring is the main stay of the towns pros
perity; it was the abundance of this pal
atable and wholesome fish that attract
ed the early settlers to the sands. Sta
tistically it is nearly as interesting as it
is upon the breakfast table. Yarmouth
and the adjacent town of Lowestoft
catch four hundred and fifty million a
year, and the gross yearly produce OF
the North Sea and East Atlantic fisher
les is said by Mr.. William Watt, of Abb
erdeen (the author of an exceedingly in
teresting essay on the subject), to be not
less than twenty-four hundred million,
or two herrings to every man, woman
and child in the world. The cod, ling,
and hake, destroy twelve times as many
behring's as all the fishermen of Europe
catch, and the shoals are also preyed
upon by other fish and great focks Of
birds. Nearly all the fish that swim
prey upon the herring at one stage or
another of its existence. The spawning
grounds are ravaged by crabs and lob
sters, and by all sorts of fat-fish, and
the fry is consumed by the haddock,
the whiting, and the herring itself. The
shoals are sometimes four miles long
and two broad, and the fish are so
densely packed that those in the rear
have been known to push the front
ranks ashore. The nets used by the
Scotch and Yarmouth fisheries together
are long enough to reach from Liver
pool to New York more than four times;
and yet some commissioners who were
appointed to investigate the subject
have reported that nothing which man
has done has diminished the stock of
behring's in the sea, and nothing which
man is likely to do can diminish it. The
fecundity of the fish is so great that the
progeny of single female would at one
spawning, if all the ova were Matched,
be sufficient to fill forty barrels, and it
is this productive power which enables
the species to hold its place. The North
Sea is the principal home of the herring,
and the shoals come and 90 from the
shore to deep water and back again, in
fluenced by temperature, spawning and
the location of their food. In the North
of Scotland they are most abundant by
the 1st of August, while in the vicinity
of Yarmouth the principal fishing does
not begin until September. No her.
rings are caught in January. Toward
the end of February the fishermen be-
gin to catch spring herring, and con-
tinue to do SO during March, April, and
May. In June and July the mid-sum-
mer herrings are caught, and little is
done in August preliminary to the
opening of the autumn or home fish
ing, which lasts from September until
about Christmas. Two or three days
before the great festival, all the boats
come in, and are moored along the
wharf, bow on, from the Southtown
Bridge to the estuary where the Yare
empties between two picturesque wood
en- piers into the sea.-W. II. Rileino,
in Harper's Magazine.