Article August 21, 1902 Issue

The Riches of the Sea

Cassell's Journal

It is probable that few people, except fishermen, realize the immense value of certain patches of sea. It is almost impossible to imagine that wide expanses of tossing foam far out in the center of the North Sea should be worth more acre for acre, than the green pastures and rich plow lands of good English soil. Yet it is quite easy to prove that the whole of that vast shallow known as the Dogger Bank brings in a bigger income than any equal area ashore which is devoted to crops or cattle. The Dogger is 170 miles long by 65 broad—that is, it has an area of 11,050 square miles. All the winter long the fishing fleets of the United Kingdom, of France, Holland, Germany, and other countries are at work on it, catching between them over 450,000 tons of fish—that is, over 40 tons to the square mile. Put these at $75 a ton, and it is easy to see that the Dogger Bank returns an income of $3,000 a square mile per year. Considering that only seven-tenths of the land ashore can be profitably used for farming, the extra profit on the sea is plainly enough seen.

Off the Essex coast lie patches of mud just below low tide-mark which cannot be bought, so valuable are they. To oysters they owe their worth. A single acre of oyster bank on which the shellfish have been allowed to grow to four year old will yield $400 to $1,000 worth of natives in a year. Any one who is exploring the Essex coast can tell the oyster beds by the long, thin stakes which rise above the water. There is a very heavy penalty for yachtsmen who carelessly allow their craft to ground on mud banks marked in this way. All the oyster beds on the coast are in the hands of different corporations, that of Whitstable being the most exclusive. Each is extremely jealous of the others, and three or four years ago there was a regular naval battle between the oystermen of the Blackwater and those of Burnham. The question in dispute was the right to dredge up shingle and shell from their rival's territory, and use it for covering their own oyster beds. Young oysters—spat, as they are called—are first laid down on beds of this kind of stuff.

Quite apart from the many wrecks which strew its floor, there are portions of the Mediterranean which are fabulously rich; $6,000 worth of sponges were taken, in 1887, from one patch of sea bottom near the Island of Rhodes. The space was not more than 150 by 120 yards. Near Rhodes, too, is coral of great value, but much of it at a depth which is absolutely prohibitive for divers without dresses.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

Sheep-Dog Trials in England