THE TRAWLERS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 266, 4 July 1932, Page 2

THE TRAWLERS

BRITAIN'S FISHERIES INDUST]RY PROYIDES EIGH.T «' MILLION MEALS" ' A I)AY« ADVENTUROUS CRUISES. There is one great food-producing industry in which Great Britain can be teompletely self-sufficing — if she chooses. Whatever happens we can always provide ourselves with a siifficiency of deep-sea fish, writes Sir Johh Marsden in the Daily Telegraph. The industry which is concerned with catching and bringing to market our supplies of fresh fish is the sixth largest industry in the country. And yet, except in the case of people living in the ports, how little it is undefstood. We are so accustomed to the well-filled slabs in the fishmongers' shops, and the piles of golden fried fish in the fish-friers' that we rarely give a thought to the risks that are undergone, or the labours that are expended in order that he'may be of-

fered, day in, day out, our choice of prjme fresh fish. Millions of Meals. Not one ih .a thousand has any coneeption otf our huge highly-organised trawling industry/ with its 1700 or :so trawlers that cost up to £18,000 apiece tobuild and put to sea; an industry that pgovides us with over 8,000,000 meals a day of one of our finest foods; which has built up magnificent fishing ports — the. best in the world — where hundreds of tons of fresh fish are landed daily from the fishing fleets and despatched to every corner of the land. On the Murman coast, northwards of the Norwegian coast, round Bear Island and Spitzbergen, Skagerak, round Iceland ahd Faroe, Greenland and in Portuguese waters, the Bay of Biscay and the Irish Sea, British ships drag their trawling nets all the year round, often at" great hazards and perils. As time passes, the Nortbern seas are becoming more and more important as the most prolific fishing grounds. Twenty years ago a fishing voyage into the Arctic was a venture not to be lightly undertaken even in summer. Now, winter and summer alike, modern trawlers - daily leave the Humber northward bound. Each mid-winter voyage is a veritable Polar expedition into seas where freezing gales, loading deck and rigging with salt spray turned to ice, alternate, with blinding snowstorms 'and dreaded ice-fogs. Added to the danger of being thus overwhel'med by sheer weight of ice is the lesser danger of frost-bite, the inconvenience of a trawl frozen to the deck, of frozen fish to cleari, and even a frozen compass.

Their Adventure. | There is perpetual darkness with a | time limit set three weeks ahead — for the trawler must make the home port before the fuel gives out or perish — the skipper must omit no opportunity of snatching a haul of fish. He knows that human or mechanical failure may involve such a fate as recently overtook the British trawler, St. Louis, missing with all hands, or the trawler which, given up as lost in November, 1927, was found months later by a sealer still deeply wrapped in a coat of frozen spray. No one was left to relate the circumstanJ ces in which the vessel had come to ~ be pushed by the drift ice high up on [f a deserted Russian beach. I It is a trade which breeds a race 1 of men set apart even from other | sailors. The skipper is given no or- | ders when he sails* It is his respons sibility to find the fish. 1 'If he fails, he gets no pay, for both I skipper and mate are paid by a perg centage of the ship>'s takings. He must | know, therefore, the habits of his | quarry, their seasonal migrations. And | consequently he knows the bottom of | . the sea as a huntsman knows his couns try. He comes in time to know the | hidden rocks 200 fathoms deep, which, 1 if they caught his trawl, would tear | the gear away. Navigation assumes 1 new aspects when it is a question | of navigating a net dragged along | the" continental shelves of the ocean. I Each voyage is a gamble. It is a I gamble with the elements and storms 1 which may force the vessel to return I home with a half-empty hold. £ The skipper may find that his fa- | vourite hunting ground has no fish. I He may be delayed so that it is hard . to make the fuel last" out till he reach- - es port. A few months ago a trawler ( was only able to get home by burning some of her gear to turn her engines. But the unkindest cut of all is when the trawler gets home with a good haul to find that the market is so glutted that the result of the voyage is a dead loss. Some of the fish maya then have to be sold to the fertilser factories at scrap prices; the gamble has ended in a heavy loss. Loss on Year. During the past year this is what has repeatedly happened. At the auction saies held every day in the fishing ports the price realised of all- fish has averaged only two pence a pound — a price which means that for its year's operating the industry has made a loss. Only another fraction of a penny would turn the scales and make it worth while for the trawlers to put out on their prolonged and perilous expeditions. During the last few years the supplies of foreign-caught fish landed in British ports have steadily increased. The foreign-caught fish landed in Grimsby alone in 1931 amounted to 459,497cwt, compared with 413,787cwt in 1930. At Billingsgate the sale of foreign fish has risen from a negligible quantity in 1910 to 17,000 tons in 1930. Meanwhile, owing to hostile tariffs and general world-poverty, exports of fish from the country have dwindled by 39 per cent. For the first time within living memory no orders for new tonnage are ' placed for 1932, and very- little was done in 1931. Only a week ago Fleetwood trawler-owners reduced by a quarter the 150 doclc hands usually engaged, by the industry in landing the catches. The outlook for other ports is equally black. ^