tell you that the number of herrings landed in Great Britain each year is
not far short of two thousand million ! (For full list of ports and seasons,
see Appendix).

The size of a shoal varies greatly. It may cover an area of half a dozen
square miles;   sometimes it is much larger.    A length of eight or nine

miles and a breadth of four to five miles are not infrequent.   The herrings                         \

do not swim near the surface all the time.   They swim much deeper during                         I

the day but each night they tend to rise to the surface and so drifting is                       , .

carried on at night.                                                                                                            I

A point to be remembered here is that the herring only come together
in shoals when they are in prime condition. That is a particularly important
point for the housewife to remember, for it means that when herrings are
cheapest they are also at their best.

Drifting is one of the hardest and most exacting of occupations and
hardy indeed must be the men who engage in it. Sleep can only be
obtained in snatches, and right through the season the men are all too often
drenched with spray. They are exposed to every wind that blows, while the
hauling in of the heavy nets is no work for a weakling.

Often after a long night's work the nets are hauled only for the men to
find that they have caught practically nothing, for although the herring
swim in shoals they are most elusive fish and shoals are not always found
where expected. On the other hand they may arrive in such vast numbers
that the nets are broken and swept away—a very serious loss for the
fishermen, for a new outfit will cost hundreds of pounds.

It is on the skipper that the responsibility rests for selecting the spot
where the nets are to be "shot" or cast. In the afternoon he sets out from
port and may be steaming about for several hours before he makes a decision.
What influences his choice ? Partly the colour of the water. The herrings
are seeking their food—the microscopic vegetable and animal life of
"plankton" that floats in the water—and brown coloured "plankton" is
preferred by them to green. So the skipper avoids green-looking patches.
Herring are the favoured food of many sea birds and fish and a gathering
of gulls or the sight of a blower whale often reveals to the skipper the most
likely place to commence operations.

When the skipper decides to shoot his nets a detachment of seven men
line up with almost military precision and pay out the nets.

The time to haul in is sometimes settled by testing the number of fish
to be found in the first half dozen nets. If the prospects are promising
from this inspection, the labour of pulling in begins. This takes anything
over three hours and in a heavy sea with the waves drenching the crew
every moment, the work" is hard and exhausting.

When a good catch is made the fish caught in the meshes of the net
are hauled by the crew over the side of the drifter in what looks like a sheet
of silver.   As each net is hauled over the deck, the fish are shaken out and, as                         J

they pile up, they are shifted with wooden spades through holes in the deck                       I

into the hold below.

During the great East Anglian fishery—where the best fishing is usually
to be found in well defined parts of the sea such as the area known as