Description
Tales of the Fish Patrol
WHITE AND YELLOW
SAN FRANCISCO BAY is so large that often its storms are more disastrous
to ocean-going craft than is the ocean itself in its violent moments.
The waters of the bay contain all manner of fish, wherefore its surface
is ploughed by the keels of all manner of fishing boats manned by all
manner of fishermen. To protect the fish from this motley floating
population many wise laws have been passed, and there is a fish patrol to
see that these laws are enforced. Exciting times are the lot of the fish
patrol: in its history more than one dead patrolman has marked defeat,
and more often dead fishermen across their illegal nets have marked
success.
Wildest among the fisher-folk may be accounted the Chinese
shrimp-catchers. It is the habit of the shrimp to crawl along the bottom
in vast armies till it reaches fresh water, when it turns about and
crawls back again to the salt. And where the tide ebbs and flows, the
Chinese sink great bag-nets to the bottom, with gaping mouths, into which
the shrimp crawls and from which it is transferred to the boiling-pot.
This in itself would not be bad, were it not for the small mesh of the
nets, so small that the tiniest fishes, little new-hatched things not a
quarter of an inch long, cannot pass through. The beautiful beaches of
Points Pedro and Pablo, where are the shrimp-catchers’ villages, are made
fearful by the stench from myriads of decaying fish, and against this
wasteful destruction it has ever been the duty of the fish patrol to act.
Product ID: 9781776784790
Sku: 9781776784790
