The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1912-03-23

neighbors will have been wondering |
at the furry which has stirred the |
up-coast press into angry protest
against the use of the otter trawl
From the headlands of Lunenburg,
the Nova Scotian Gloucester, to the
dunes of Provincetown, fishermen
are wagging their heads over what
they consider the finish of the fish
This trouble over the otter trawl is
merely a re-enactment of the fable of
the goose and the golden eggs, Shall
the off-shore grounds be fished by the
old methods which have kept the
country supplied, and, at the end of
two centuries, left the banks as rich
as ever; or shall they be fished by
new method at once wasteful and de-
structive, cheapening fish temporarily
perhaps, but sure to make them dear
er in the end. 1t is an issue of con-
servation. One more directly affect
ing the collective nav Of the consum-
er hardly confronts this country to-
day.
These opposed methods of fishing
are represented by two types of craft.
The fishing-schooners send out their
crews, one man or two to a dory, to
drop lines of baited hooks which lie
along the sea horizon. The ends of
these lines are anchored and the an
chors are marked by buoys. In few
hours, these travis" are hauled, and
the fish ferried back to the schooner.
The work trains seamen to an amaz-
ing hardihood and dexterity. Only
the native fish are caught. By scat
tering more than 3O,OOO,OOO pounds on
bait on the fishing grounds annually
(only about one-eighth of which ac-
tually captures fish these deep-sea
gardens are enriched exactly as the
farmer treats his soil
Devastater of the Bottom.
The other type is a small iron
steamer. There is only small feet
hardly more than half dozen YES
sells in all-but it is the nucleus Of
what will be thrice as many as the
industry develops. These steamers
drag along the sea-bottom a net
shaped like a huge sack. Its rim is a
heavy TRAVELLING hawser, weighted with
lead to make the under part bite"
the ground, and its upper part is
buoyed with cork to keep the mouth
of the net open.
This sack is towed along the sea.
bottom for an hour and a half before
being emptied. Formerly the period
was four hours, but this so brU.sed
and scaled the fish as to make them
unmarketable. The point is that this
net gathers in literally everything
Once it was a two-ton boulder. Lost
anchors have been grubbed up in il
by the dozen. What this apparatus
does to the sea-life on the bottom Of
the fishing grounds may be guessed
On spots where the otter travis have
dragged the mussel beds are de
stroyed, the shells broken, and the
bait destroyed. Nothing is left to at
tract fish to these banks as feeding
grounds.
Quite apart from the damage to thu
bottom, the completeness of the hau
of the otter trawl is in itself wasteful
1t catches small fish, or "scrod," il
great quantities. Indeed, before tn,
days of the "steam-trawler" so few
of these small Seeding fish wer
brought in that there was no marke
for them. Yet it not infrequently haI
pens that a quarter of the catch of al
otter trawI consists of fish too small
to be salable. They must be shoy
elled overheard again, dead. When
is considered that these otter trawl
are dragged night and day in tw
shifts, the waste of the process /
seen to be enormous.
Bill in Congress to Prevent 1t.
To prevent it, Congressman A. J
Gardner of Essex, who fights the bal
ties of the Gloucester fishermen, ha
introduced a bill into Congress to pre-
hibit the entrance into our ports c
any fish caught by the otter traw
and fixing as a penalty for violatio
the forfeiture of the offending vessel
registry
Congress could enact this remedis
measure with the reasonable assul
ance that it would be supported by tn
Canadian Parliament. The martini
provinces are even more alarmed g
the devastations of the steam ira!
ers than Gloucester, and only a wee
ago the Lunenburg shippers voted t
send a deputation to the Federal lei
islators to urge law similar to tha
proposed by Mr. Gardner. Alread
Canada prohibits the use of the otte
( traWl within the three-mile limit.