Abstract
IT appears possible that the British sea fisheries will suffer from the effects of the war more, perhaps, than most other national industries. Already a large part of the North Sea is closed to trawl fishing, and it may be that before long all this area will become a mare clausum. Since we have taken rather more than 60 per cent. of our fish supply from this sea in recent years the loss to the fishing industry is serious. The actual war losses, so far, have been insignificant, but when to these are added the loss to the national food supply of the vessels and men now engaged in mine-sweeping, the disturbance to the industry which must result from the shifting of the fishing fleets to other open waters, and the loss of the Continental markets for cured herrings, the total loss will be sufficiently great. Add to this the in-calculable loss which scientific research must bear in the suspension of the international fishery investigations, and we have very much to lay to the blame of German world-politics. The co-ordinated scheme of fishery observations carried on up to last July by the maritime powers of Northern Europe was the laborious result of more than a dozen years' negotiation; probably no one then engaged in it will live to see its resumption.
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J., J. The Sea Fisheries and the War . Nature 94, 201–202 (1914). https://doi.org/10.1038/094201a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/094201a0