Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1938, Page 322
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LE NORD
bustling life and activity when the weather is fine; trawlers, line
steamers and motor vessels let all other fishing rest for a while
— for here the aim is herring and herring alone. To each vessel
two boats are attached, the purse-seine boats, in which the purse-
seine is kept ready to be thrown into the water. While the mid-
night sun shines low in the sky everybody’s eyes are watching
for shoals of herring on the surface, and when the herring is there,
when thousands of “dark-backs” ruffle the surface, the people
rush into the boats, and before we know where we are the purse-
seine has surrounded the shoal and is closed together at the bot-
tom — herring is caught. Now the mother ship comes and begins
taking in the herring. Perhaps the catch is so large that it is im-
possible to empty the seine; then a good friend who may have
been waiting near by can take the rest if he has nothing better
to do. And now to port. Now the crew can get a little sleep, but
the principal aim is to get ready to leave the harbour, to come
out again for more herring. And then come the stormy days when
nothing can be done on the open sea. Then the ships come crow-
ding into the harbour to seek shelter from the wind and the
waves, not only the Icelandic ships, but also Norwegian, Swe-
dish, Finnish, Lithuanian, or whatever nationality they may be.
Then the little town is changed into a cosmopolitan Klondyke
with a diversity of nationalities and languages.
A few years ago the Icelandic fishermen were very back-
wart as regards plaice fishing, so that of ioo plaice taken off
Iceland the Icelanders themselves only caught seven. This was
felt so much the more since Iceland was easily first among her
rivals as regards the quantitative production of the cheaper fishes,
but now a new development has taken place in this kind of fish-
ing. During recent years the Icelanders have learnt the use of
new fishing-gear, the Danish-seine. Once more our fishermen were
obliged to work hard to learn to use new tackle for a new kind
of fishing.
3. General Remarks.
The outline of the Icelandic fisheries I have endeavoured to
give here, of their history and biological basis, makes no claim
to be exhaustive. I have merely tried to point out the most
important facts, but there are many things worth noticing that
I have not had the time or space to deal with, e. g. the considerable