The Patea Mail. Established 1875. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1883. DEEP SEA FISHING.

Patea Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 1000, 21 February 1883, Page 2

The Patea Mail. Established 1875. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1883. DEEP SEA FISHING.

By a Press Association telegram received from Dunedin a few days back, we learn that the Dnncdin Deep Sea Fishing Company has proved a failure, and has collapsed, after losing £SOO within a very short time. We have not been furnished with particulars showing the causes of the loss, but from the circumstance of so much having been dropped a very little while after the commencement of the enterprise, we can only assume that the operations were begun on too extensive a scale, with probably a staff of paid officials, secretary, treasurer, &c., and that the office expenses migjht have eaten up the profits. For the scheme in itself was a very feasible one. The demand for fish at reasonable prices is constant. It would be obviously a great colonial advantage to add to our stock of light and wholesome food ; and the productiveness of fish is out of all proportion to either sheep, cattle, or grain. Thus, for instance, an able writer in Blackwood’s Magazine last year makes the following remarkable calculation : —“ Granted that, a cod-fish of average size contains four millions of ova, one million of which is successfully hatched, and that half of the number attains, say, a weight of lOlbs each, and are sold at the rate of 3d per lb, or half a crown each we obtain for the lot (the produce, be it remembered, of only one mother fish) a sum of £62,500 ! ” Of course this enormous rate of profit is not actually realised. The ova and young fry of the fish have a multitude of enemies, who thin their numbers frightfully. But even here much may be done to stop the decrease. In Scotland and in America the science or art of pisciculture has gone so far that not merely fresh water, but also salt water fish are artificially reared in enclosed spaces, and very large numbers of them brought to maturity. In the case of the more valuable kinds of fish it is clear that if the evil to which we have referred, of undue destruction when young, is obviated, the profits of the undertaking must be very large. Thus, for instance, we learn that taking the number of salmon in the Tay at 25,000 female fish, ranging from 7 to 40 lbs in weight, most of which ought to yield their eggs, and each on the average yielding 10,000 ova, it would give as many as 250 million eggs. It is no wonder, therefore, that even after making all the necessary deductions from the profit, on account of our present imperfect knowledge of fish rearing, the annual value of the salmon taken in the United Kingdom is about £900,000, of which oyer £505,000 is from Ireland. Nor is this art of fish rearing by any means, one entirely of modern practice and profitableness. Benders of ancient history may recollect that the fish in the ponds of Lucullus wore estimated to be worth about £40,000 sterling of our money. Sometimes the fish in such ponds as these were so valuable that slaves, themselves a valuable commodity, were thrown in to furnish food for the finny tribes. We are not aware whether his Holiness the Pope of Rome utilises heretics in this way, but it is certain that he realises, or did until lately realise, a comfortable addition to his income from the eels which ascend the Po from the Adriatic and are detained in the lagoons of Comachio and caught there.

It appears then, that both at home and abroad, both in ancient and modern times, fish have been turned to most profitable account. It is deaf that it would be a great gain to us if the waters of the sea which surrounds New Zealand, hitherto an almost useless waste for productive purposes, were all converted into a vast series of farms for fish available for whomsoever it might concern. And, besides increasing the existing quantity of onr food, we might also improve its quality greatly by fish culture. Most of our New Zealand fish are very poor in quality, the frost fish being perhaps at present the best of all, Bnt as the Americans have solved the problem of artificially rearing sea fish by hatching shad and herrings, not in thousands but in millions, there is no reason at all why we should not learn the art from them and practise it. In a new colony like ours it is particularly absurd to be afraid of trying, what to the ignorant might seem novelties, especially in the way of utilising onr economic resources available. In a colony like ours, surrounded by enough salt water to supply the world with fish it is as strange as it is idle and foolish, to make no use of onr big marine estate, A well managed Deep Sea Fishing Company ought to be a most profitable concern, and, we believe, would be, if it were insisted on that the expenses should be strictly proportioned to the magnitude of the undertaking. We don’t want to have only one boat at work fishing, and an official staff suitable for a big company to chronicle that one boat’s doings. The fact, however, that with the rudest appliances, and with no knowledge whatever of fish rearing, men manage to make a living of some sort by fishing, would seem at once to show that with vastly improved fishing grounds, and a better qualify offish, and with belter boats and nets the profits might be greatly increased, and one of the most successful of all native industries be thoroughly established.