Some Scientific Aspects of Scottish Fisheries

Abstract

AT ever recurring periods, for at least eight hundred or nine hundred years, appeals have been made to the Legislature concerning the decadence of the fishing industry; yet the harvest of the sea continues century after century, notwithstanding the fears of the fishermen and the distrust or indifference of the public. Without alluding to the earlier Commissions or Committees, the Commission of 1863, including Prof. Huxle, Lord Eversley, and Sir James Caird, first resolutely set itself against the prevailing view of the impoverishment of the sea-solely from the evidence brought before it. Frank Buckland's inquiry, somewhat later, adopted the same view. In 1883 Lord Dalhousie's Commission made a new departure and appointed a scientific zoologist to make investigations on sea and in laboratory. Amongst the results were the institution of statistics and the closure of certain bays for experiments, the results of which after ten years' work have been duly dealt with elsewhere. Now comes the Departmental Committee, which, without much allusion to previous investigations, has carefully and conscientiously treated the subject from evidence de novo.