The Resources of the Sea: As Shown in the Scientific Experiments to Test the Effects of Trawling and of the Closure of Certain Areas off the Scottish Shores

IN this chapter is a general statement of facts which point to the conclusion that, with some exceptions, the fauna of the open sea, from its nature and environment, would appear, to a large extent, to be independent of man's influence. In examining the resources of the sea we are confronted with very different problems from those which meet us in the con­ sideration of the fresh waters and the land. Moreover, this peculiar divergence has a tendency to mislead those whose ex­ periences have been accumulated in surroundings in which all the operations of nature and of man are readily observed and easily understood. It is but recently since we relied, for instance, on the know­ ledge derived from the effects of the non-protection of landanimals as a guide in dealing with the sea-fishes. It satisfied some to urge that man's influence had swept off the larger mammals from great areas, and at the present moment is rapidly diminishing the numbers of such forms as the right and other whales, the elephants, giraffes, elks, buffaloes and bisons. Comparatively recent legislation in our own country has year by year rendered the hare rarer than it has ever been previously, indeed it has swept this graceful denizen of the fields, this delight of every lover of nature, as well as unrivalled nourishment for the sick, nearly out of certain counties, and may lead to its almost total extinction; the wolf has disappeared, while the badger is scarce, and where, we may ask, would the red deer, the roe and the fox have