AUSTRALIAN FISHERIES

By F. G. AFLALO

I HAVE been asked to contribute a few words on the little I know, or knew, of the fisheries of our Australian colonies, and, with two reservations, it gives me great pleasure to accede to this request. The first of these is, that I have not been in those parts for five years, and five years mean much in the industrial development of Australian colonies. The second is, that I am in the dark as to the nature of my readers. To those who live at home it would be an easy matter to give some idea of the present state and prospects of the fishing industry in Australia; to those whose home, on the other hand, is in the colonies under notice, it would be preferable to point one or two of the morals of our own inshore fisheries and indicate the best means of profiting in the newly-exploited waters by mistakes that are here past remedy.

Australian fisheries, in the usual old-world sense of the word, scarcely existed when I was in the colonies. That this national neglect of promising sources of food supply and profit should endure is not to be expected. The development of new regions commences, not unnaturally, on land. First, probably, the agriculturist and stock-owner; then the miner. Then, from time to time, the rise of various manufactures. Last of all the sea. The turn of the sea has not yet come, but it is at hand; the silver harvest will follow the golden. Herrings and pilchards, flat-fish, bream, garfish, trumpeter, and many other species unknown

north of the Equator await the hand of the spoiler. Already, most interesting trawling experiments have been conducted on the coast of New South Wales, under the direction of Mr. Frank Farnell, and his report to the Chief Secretary, which curiously enough reached me as I was writing these notes, seems most interesting and valuable, and moreover full of promise for the colony's fisheries when the public shall have come better to appreciate their possibilities as a remunerative investment. When outside capital is found, the old mastery of the seas will reassert itself, none the worse for a period of rest, and the fisheries will no longer be left in the hands of Italians, Greeks, and Chinamen. (Against these gentlemen in their own country no one need say a word, but they certainly strike the visitor as somewhat in evidence in some industries that the Anglo-Saxon could better keep in his own hands.) Then the fisheries will provide food and wage. The problem of distribution is one for heads accustomed to such organisation; but once it is solved, the rest is easy.

Mr.

Those seas are teeming with edible fish, more particularly, of course, opposite the hundreds of leagues of uninhabited coast unbroken by a settlement. Farnell's report confirms the evidence of my own eyes with regard to the abundance of fish in coastal waters. Even within half a day's steam of Sydney or Brisbane, the quantities of schnapper, morwong, and other excellent table fish continually astonish the angling visitor accustomed to the meagre hauls in depleted inshore waters at home. Granted these are fish of the rocks, against which the trawl, the chief means of supplying the market, would be useless. But Mr. Farnell's report gives evidence of a variety of flatfish, and, what is of equal importance, of the presence of great banks on which the trawl could be used with. admirable results.

It would be idle to deny that there are drawbacks, with which fishermen in England and Scotland have not perhaps to contend. Sharks, though already a scourge in the English Channel, rending the mackerel nets and pilfering the long line of its best fish, are in Australia of dangerous size, and swarm in such numbers that long-lining would, I fancy, be hopeless. At any rate I recollect—on the advice, if memory does not deceive me, of Mr. Farnell himself sending back home a boulter with 150 hooks, that I had ordered out for experimental purposes. I was assured that the sharks would not leave so much as a swivel on it, and, from what I saw later during my stay, I have no reason to question the correctness of the warning.

The same objection applies, though in lesser degree, to hand-lining. When the sharks were around, I have seen three fish out of every four bitten in half while the fishermen hauled them to the surface. On the other hand, there was many an excellent day of uninterrupted sport, during which these ocean scavengers never once molested us.

Again, as to nets; the drift net would, I fear, be hopeless for this same shark trouble. Even at home, where the blue shark is a mere infant beside the blue pointers of Port Jackson and neighbourhood, drift nets get terribly punished in the pilchard season. And until Mr. Farnell's investigations had laid bare the mysteries of hidden sand - banks, it was generally thought, at any rate three years ago, that there were too many small disconnected reefs to admit of the economic working of the otter trawl. This may, however, be got over. Yet another disadvantage under which Australian fishermen will undoubtedly have to contend is the great summer heat, in which it will be next to impossible to convey fresh fish from any but the nearest grounds, and these, as history shows, soon become exhausted. Even on our own coasts at home,

I have known of many a case in which whole cargoes of mackerel and other rapidly decomposing food-fish were rendered unfit for market during the three or four hours' sail-with perhaps an hour becalmed— between the fishing grounds and the quay. How much more serious would be the difficulty under the burning caress of an Australian January sun!

One other matter is, I think, worth mentioning, and that is the importance of not permitting legitimate enthusiasm in a new and interesting industry to run away with discretion. I recollect hearing out there a good deal of dreamy talk on the part of commercial visionaries of the future marvels of the canning industry, and of the vast returns on supplying people at home with Australian fish preserved or tinned by different processes. Potted king-fish and trumpeter were to be a breakfast luxury in all polite circles in the old country. Marinated trevally was to be as indispensable for the hors d'œuvre as kangaroo tail for the soup. This is, of course, rubbish. Curiosity will doubtless dictate now and again a flickering demand for any novelty of the kind; and a few thousand tins of kangaroo-tail soup, or, for that matter, of pickled schnapper, might very well find a market. But this is not an industry, and Australians who have been home do not need to be assured that our own salmon and sole and turbot will take a very great deal of supplanting, and that, what is more, there is not the fish yet known in Australian waters that is likely to supplant any one of them. I would not for one moment deny schnapper, black bream, garfish, Hobart trumpeter, Fitzroy perch, and one or two besidesprovided they are eaten perfectly fresh-a place among the finest table fish of the world. But tinned fish can never be better than a makeshift for the fresh article, and Australian fishermen should for the next century or two have plenty to do in supplying their

own countrymen, without endeavouring to force an inferior tinned article on unappreciative consumers ten thousand miles away. No; it is for the Australian consumer that nature intended Australian fish, and, with more developed fisheries and better means of transit, the consumer would be as well off probably as in any other part of the globe.

In addition to the aforementioned trawling experiments, which Mr. Farnell has promised not to drop, a word must be said of the very praiseworthy and successful attempts to propagate rainbow trout and others of the salmonida in the rivers and lakes all over the colonies. The ova are obtained from Wellington, New Zealand, and hundreds of thousands are on order at the present time. The extraordinary success attending the introduction of trout in Tasmania, as well as the correspondingly emphatic failures in respect of the salmon itself, are now matters of old history.

A word on the amateur side of the question, and I am done. Angling in most of the colonies means the salt-water fishing, whether on the open ocean or in the creeks and harbours with which that coast is riddled, which has only of late years come to be popular at home. Save in Tasmania, and in a few isolated waters in the southern colonies, fly fishing is practically unknown, though the strides now being made in acclimatisation will soon bring about a change in this respect. The Australian began with sea fishing, and his grandchildren, or rather perhaps their grandchildren, will seek sport on lake and river. With ourselves the reverse is the case. Many of our lakes and rivers are poisoned or fished out. Others are in private hands at enormous rents, and some sportsmen are forced—some even who do not actually prefer it to get what fishing we may on the sea.