Templeman, a South Shields fisherman, says that when engaged in trawling he has drawn up three and a half tons of fish-spawn! He also says in his evidence that in trawling one-half of the fish are dead and so hashed as to be unfit for market. Has seen a ton and a half of herring-spawn offered for sale as manure. The take of fish upon the Dogger Bank has decreased very much. The fishermen cannot catch one quarter part there now that they used to do. The number of trawl-boats on the Dogger Bank has increased about 10 per cent within the last year, and yet they are getting about a quarter less fish. Some of them can scarcely make a living now at all. They have impoverished all other places, and now they have come here, and in a short time there will not be a fish left. It is the same with the other fish-banks, and that accounts for the trawlers now coming to this neighbourhood. They have destroyed the Hartlepool and Sunderland ground, and now they have come to a small patch off here, and they will sweep it clean too. A trawl-boat will sometimes catch five tons a day; but on the average a ton and a half; but as a great deal of that has to be thrown overboard, they only bring about ten cwt. to market. The boats belonging to Cullercoats, carrying the same number of hands as the trawlers, only catch upon the average about five stones. The fish caught in the trawl are not fit for the market, as the insides are broke and the galls burst and running through them. “If I had my way, I would pass an Act of Parliament to do away with trawling, and oblige every man to fish with hooks and lines. I think that would increase the quantity of fish for the country, because the young fish would not take the hooks. I am not aware that if the small boats get five stones a day it would at all diminish the supply of fish for the market; but if the trawling is allowed to continue that very soon will.” Thomas Bolam, on being examined, said: “I have followed the herring-fishing for twenty-one years, and the white-fishing six years. In the course of those six years I have found that the supply of white fish has gradually diminished both in the number and size of the fish. In twenty years’ experience in the herring-fishing I find a fearful diminution in the total quantity caught. The shoals of herring are now only about one-third the size they were when I first commenced the fishing. At that time we used to get 14,000 or 15,000; now the length of 4000 or 5000 is thought a good take. I attribute the falling-off to the existence of the trawling system.”