1931 : Arctic Ocean Warming Up- Creating A Fishing Boom

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Steven Goddard

http://trove.nla.gov.au/

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One Response to 1931 : Arctic Ocean Warming Up- Creating A Fishing Boom

Blade says:

September 22, 2011 at 2:21 pm

Here is the plaintext …

Geraldton Guardian and Express (WA : Saturday 10 January 1931)

WARMING ARCTIC OCEAN

EARTH’S TILT MODIFIES CURRENTS

Marine surveys recently carried out by the British Admiralty show that a ‘warming up’ of the Arctic Sea has been caused by an alteration in the tilt of the earth.

This remarkable phenomenon is responsible for the rapid development of of the north polar regions as Britain’s chief source of fish.

The surveys show that the directions taken by the Gulf Stream are changing. As a result the ice barrier is being pushed back and parts of the Arctic Sea that were formerly almost impenetrable are becoming accessible at certain seasons.

Full advantage is being taken of this change by British fishermen. Larger and better boats are being built for the Arctic trawling grounds, and improved methods adopted for handling the fish. In place of the old carriers which took them to port in wells, ships fitted with refrigerating plants are being employed. At the landing ports cold storage ware houses have been erected where the fish can be kept in cold chambers, each fish being sealed up in an envelope to prevent the ‘frost’ from spoiling its flavour.

The ‘shooting’ of nets in the inclement Arctic regions is not carried out without considerable hardship to the trawler crews. But they arc carefully ‘mothered”’ by the ships of the Admiralty Fishing Patrol. At the same time these patrol vessels make surveys to discover new fishing grounds.

Britain ‘s best quality supplies of cod, plaice and haddock, already come from the chilly waters of such districts us those in the vicinity of Bear Island close on the edge of the Spitzbergen banks.

An officer of the Admiralty Fishery Patrol, just back from survey work in the Arctic, said that an increasing demand for fish had enforced a search for new sources of supply. Where a big haul was made one day, he said, there might be empty nets the next. In this curious fashion the herring had disappeared from the Dutch coast some wars ago, while other classes of fish had moved from their old habitats in the North Sea.

Drifters and trawlers, he continued, from such ports as Aberdeen, Hull, and Grimsby have had to look elsewhere for their catches. Their search, in which they have been assisted by the Admiralty, has proved successful, and proved incidentally a story of thrilling adventure with the blizzard-swept waters of the Arctic as its scene.

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