THE HERRING FISHING INDUSTRY
Herrings abound in the waters round the coast of Great Britain.
Ordinarily they are widely scattered in deep water, but at certain
times of the year they come together in shoals in the warmer water near
the surface for the purpose of spawning. It is at this time that they
are of greatest value for food purposes and, being gathered together in
shoals, are most economically caught.
The herring may spawn at any time of the year. In this respect it
differs from all other British marine food fishes. Most British caught
herrings spawn during September and Autumn. Very little spawning
takes place during late winter and spring, i.e. just after minimum
sea temperature. Each local race (or species) appears to spawn at a
constant time of the year. The date of the annual spawning, and hence
the herring fishing season, varies from point to point round the coast.
Herrings caught at different places show well-marked differences in
appearance and quality, which are evidently due to differences in
species and feeding ground. The food value of the herring will depend
also upon the time of the year at which spawning occurs. Thus, in the
Irish Sea, there are two races of herrings—the Manx and the Welsh. The
Manx herring spawns in summer (September), and is rich in fat; the
Welsh herring spawns in winter (November and December), and is poor
in fat. Herrings are first caught off the West coast of Scotland in
the waters round the Hebrides. This fishing begins in the middle of
May, its chief centre being Stornoway. In early June herrings are
caught in the waters round the Orkneys and Shetlands, and then in
succession off Wick, Fraserburgh and Peterhead, and the Northumberland
coast (Eyemouth, Berwick and Sea Houses). About the middle of July the
herring fishery season begins at Blyth and Shields, and at Scarborough
and Grimsby towards the end of July. At Yarmouth and Lowestoft it
begins early in October. The last herrings to be caught in British
waters are caught round Devon and Cornwall in December.
Of the various kinds of herring obtained at different places, the
largest and finest fish are those caught in Downings Bay off the North
of Ireland, Castle Bay off the Island of Barra in the South Hebrides,
and off the Shetlands. Herrings differ very much in their suitability
for handling, keeping and curing. Most herrings have a small gut which
is easily removed without seriously damaging the body of the fish.
Blyth and Shields herrings, however, are very rich and fat, and have
a specially big, distended gut. Such herrings are difficult to clean
because, when this large gut is removed, the belly of the fish is so
tender that it is often broken. Herrings caught off these ports are fat
and oily, so that many are landed in a broken condition. The Yarmouth
herring is firm and hard, and is the best adapted for handling and
curing.
Unlike that of the cod, the flesh of the herring is very rich in oil
and fat. The body flesh of the herring consists essentially of two
well-developed layers of adipose tissue, alternating with two layers
of muscular tissue. The fat in this adipose tissue is very liquid and
oily, and tends to make the fish tender. The actual amount of body fat
varies widely throughout the year. It gradually rises to a maximum
before spawning takes place, and diminishes slightly before spawning
and afterwards rapidly to a minimum. Thus, the fat content of Manx
summer herrings is about 2 per cent during the winter, and rises
rapidly in June and July, until in August, just before spawning, it is
over 30 per cent. The herring has a small liver which also contains
some oil.
Fishing is carried out with drifters. Practically all drifters to-day
are steam-driven, although recently a number of motor-driven drifters
have come into use. Motor-driven drifters are mostly sailing boats
converted. Each drifter carries a crew of seven men, including the
skipper and engineer. The boats are largely privately owned and the
crew work on a share basis. A number of boats are owned by companies.
The boats from the various fishing ports work round the coast,
following the fishing from port to port. At Yarmouth during the fishery
season there are about 1,200 drifters from nearly all the fishing ports
round the coast. Stornoway, Wick, Fraserburgh, Peterhead, Aberdeen,
Berwick, Whitby, and Yarmouth are all well represented.
Each boat carries from 70 to 80 nets. The nets are approximately 1
in. mesh. Each net is essentially a long rectangular curtain, hanging
vertically in the water. Its upper edge, which is about 55 yds. long,
is buoyed up by about 80 to 84 corks distributed equidistantly along
it from end to end. The net is about 6 yds. wide. Each net hangs with
its upper edge about 2 fathoms below the surface of the water, being
attached at each corner to two pellets or bladders, resembling large
footballs, and serving as floats.
Fishing nets and sails are often coated with warm gelatine, and then
immersed in a strong solution of tannin. This renders the gelatine
insoluble and preserves the nets against the attacks of destructive
organisms.
[Illustration: FIG. 12
HERRING DRIFTER]
When fishing, the boat takes up a position stern on to the tide. The
nets are paid out over the bow and connected up in line, and carried
by the tide till they form one long line, one end of which is attached
to the drifter. The position of the nets is indicated by the line of
bladder floats.
The fish swim against the nets, push their heads through, and then,
owing to their gill openings, find that they cannot withdraw their
heads, and in this way are caught in enormous numbers. Generally,
fishing goes on all night, and in the morning the nets are hauled in,
and, together with the attached fish, are thrown into the hold situated
amidships. The drifters then return with all possible speed to the
fish wharf. While the boats are returning to port, the men draw the
nets from the hold and shake them free from any entangled fish. When
the drifter reaches port, she moors alongside the fish wharf, bow on,
and unloads her cargo of fish, using her derrick mast. The fish are
unloaded in a round basket which is stamped by the Fishery Board’s
officer as holding a quarter of a “cran.” The word “cran” is derived
from the “crown” branded by the Fishery Board’s officer on each of the
two wooden shafts in the basket.
The cran is the measure which is universally used in the trade. At
Yarmouth and Lowestoft originally herrings were counted out and sold
by the “last.” A cran averages from 900 to 1,000 herrings and weighs
approximately 3 cwts. A “last” equals ten crans, and originally
consisted of 13,200 herrings, counted out. This method, of course, was
too slow and has now been abandoned.
[Illustration: FIG. 13
CURING YARD AT YARMOUTH]
The herrings, as they are removed from the ship, are put into special
baskets called “swills,” each swill holding half a cran. The swills
containing the day’s catch are arranged in rows on the fish wharf,
opposite each drifter. It is a great sight to see about four or five
hundred drifters lying, bow on, alongside the fish wharf for about
2-1/2 miles, all unloading fish as fast as they can.
A good day’s catch would consist of about 90 crans. A good catch,
therefore, would average about 100,000 herrings, and would weigh about
13 tons. Some boats come in with as many as 160 crans of fish, and
the total “cranage” for a day may exceed 30,000. The total catch for
Yarmouth on a good day would be about 30,000,000 herrings, weighing
about 4,000 tons.
Sometimes when the catch has been poor, the drifters remain out on the
fishing grounds for another day, rather than come home with a small
catch. In this case, the two catches are kept separate, the first catch
being called “overdays.” Overdays are worth about half the price of
fresh fish and are, of course, less suitable for high grade curing.
After it has been purchased by the curer, the fresh herring may develop
into a salted herring, a red herring, a bloater, or a kipper, depending
upon the degree of salting and smoking to which it is subjected.
Herrings are sometimes put into cold storage, to be withdrawn
subsequently as occasion demands, either to be salted or, more
frequently, to be consumed fresh. Cold storage affords a convenient
method of preserving herrings when there is a glut, for at such times
it is often impossible to deal with the herrings adequately in the
ordinary curing yards.
=Salted Herrings.= The fresh herrings are delivered to the curer’s
yards. Here, the fish are emptied into broad, shallow troughs, which
generally run from end to end of the yard. The troughs are about 4
ft. wide, and are generally made of wood and arranged at a convenient
working height. Usually, the trough is situated just inside the
boundary wall, and the fish are delivered into it through large
openings in the wall.
[Illustration: FIG. 14
SCOTTISH FISHER GIRLS]
The fish are gutted and salted by Scottish girls—many of them from
the Hebrides—who come to Yarmouth and other places in the season for
this purpose. These girls are all brought up in Scottish villages, and
are extraordinarily expert in all the operations connected with the
cleaning and salting of the fish. They work in crews of three, and take
very good care that each member of the crew is a good worker, as they
are paid according to the amount of work they do.
Each girl receives 25s. a week as a kind of subsistence allowance, and
is paid 1s. a barrel for the work she does.
As the fish are delivered into the gutting trough, they are liberally
sprinkled with salt, thus enabling the women to grasp the fish easily,
as otherwise the fish are too slippery for quick handling.
The women work standing in a row beside the trough. They pick up a
fish, gut it by inserting a sharp knife just below and behind the
gills, and with a quick, upward cut, bring away the gut. The guts drop
into small tubs placed in front of each worker, and are collected
periodically and sold to manufacturers of manure. Behind each woman
are three shallow tubs or baskets, and after she has gutted a fish,
she throws it behind her into one of the three tubs, according to
its quality and size. In this way, the two operations of gutting and
selecting the fish are combined. As the tubs of gutted fish become
filled, they are taken away by other girls to the barrel packers, and
are packed in separate barrels, according to quality or size. The
barrels are arranged in long rows, generally parallel to, and at some
distance behind, the gutting trough. A girl will pack about three
barrels in an hour.
The gutted fish are first of all emptied into large, shallow tubs
called “rousing tubs,” placed just behind the row of barrels, and are
again sprinkled with salt.
The packer takes an armful of fish from the rousing tub and drops them
into the barrel. Each time the fish are taken from the rousing tub
the contents of the tub are well stirred up. The fish are then packed
in the barrel in layers, bellies upward, and each layer is liberally
sprinkled with salt. In this way each individual fish is first of
all thickly coated with salt in the rousing tub, and adjacent layers
of fish in the barrel are also separated by a layer of salt. In this
packing process, it is important that the fishery salt used should be
coarse, reasonably hard, slow in dissolving and present in considerable
excess. It should be coarse enough to prevent the fish from touching
each other, thus enabling the brine to penetrate to every part. It
should be hard enough to withstand the pressure of the fish in the
barrel. It should dissolve slowly, so that the salting process takes
place gradually, enough salt remaining undissolved throughout the
process to keep the fish from touching. Altogether, about 1 cwt. of
salt is used for each barrel of herrings cured.
The barrel, when fully packed, is covered over and left for about
eight days. During this time, the salt extracts water from the fish
and dissolves in it to form a saturated brine. The efficiency of this
salting process necessarily depends upon the salt being present in
considerable excess, so that the brine formed is kept saturated, and
consequently continues to withdraw water from the fish.
At the end of eight days, the barrels are opened, an inch hole is
drilled in the side at the bilge, and the pickle allowed to run out.
It is found that, owing to the withdrawal of water from them, the
herrings have shrunk considerably, and some more salted herrings are
added to the barrel, until it is full again. It is then fastened down
permanently, turned over on its side and filled with brine pickle, and
corked up.
The brine pickle which is formed during the eight days is not allowed
to run to waste, but is used for filling up the barrels after they have
been repacked. This brine pickle contains amino bases, together with
small quantities of coagulable proteids, and is of distinct nutritive
value. The Poles and Russians, who are great consumers of these
salted herrings, actually use the pickle as a kind of sauce or gravy,
dipping their bread in it. This, together with the general demand for
salted herrings in these two countries, may very largely be due to the
comparative scarcity and high price of salt there.
A cran of herrings (about 1,000 fish, weighing approximately 3 cwts.)
uses up 1 cwt. of salt and, when completely salted, just fills a
barrel. The curer estimates that 5 to 6 tons of salt will be sufficient
for 100 crans of herrings. Herrings salted in this proportion should
be exported and consumed before the warm weather comes, as they are
liable to decay if the temperature rises above 70° F. The herrings
that were packed for the British Government (1920-1921) were salted
more heavily than usual (7 to 8 tons of salt per 100 crans), as, owing
to the uncertain condition of the Russian and German markets, it was
necessary to keep some of the fish in stock for a considerable time.
Such a heavily-salted fish would be unpalatable to the home consumer.
In Yarmouth and Lowestoft, and also in Scotland, 100 crans of herrings
should fill, when cured, from 125 to 130 barrels.
Herrings are sometimes salted at sea, 1 ton of salt being used to each
last (10 crans) of herrings. Such herrings are mostly used to make “red
herrings.”
=Red Herrings.= A considerable trade in red herrings is done with
the Mediterranean and the Levant. For this trade, the fish must
be thoroughly smoke-cured, otherwise they will not keep in the
comparatively warm climate. The fish are first of all dry-salted in
concrete tanks about 10 ft. square and 6 ft. deep, arranged under the
floor of the curing house. Fresh fish and salt are simply thrown in and
mixed up, and left to develop their own pickle.
Generally speaking, 1 ton of salt is used to 10 crans of herrings, and
each tank will hold from 20 to 30 crans of the fish. The fish should
be left in these salting tanks for five days at least; sometimes, of
course, they are left for months, according to the trade, in which case
the tanks practically serve as storage tanks for the salted fish. The
fish are removed from the tank as required, washed, and put on “speets”
and smoked. A “speet” is a wooden rod about 3 ft. 6 ins. long and
pointed at one end. The fish are threaded on the speet through the gill
openings and mouth, each speet holding from 20 to 30 fish. The speets
are then stacked horizontally on racks in the smoke house “loves”
(lofts), about 6 ins. apart and about 12 ins. above each other, until
the smoke house is filled from the roof to within a few feet of the
floor. When the smoke-house is filled, fires are lighted on the floor.
Generally, the fuel used is oak turnings, shavings, and sawdust. This
material burns quickly, and gives a very resinous smoke which not only
dries the fish, but also permeates it thoroughly.
The rate of curing and the character of the finished product depend
upon the temperature of the smoke, and the proportion of antiseptic
resinous materials in it. When the oak or other suitable hard wood fuel
is in the form of turnings or dust it burns quickly, and thus produces
a fairly hot smoke, containing antiseptic substances—for example,
guaiacol and creosol. Such a smoke will cure the fish quickly.
If oak billets or logs are used they burn comparatively slowly. The
smoke, therefore, is not so hot and, since slow combustion in this case
probably means more complete combustion, the proportion of resinous
constituents in the smoke is liable to be considerably diminished. When
oak billets are used, therefore, curing takes place much more slowly.
The temperature in the smoke house will also depend very much upon the
prevailing weather temperature outside. In cold weather it is difficult
to keep the temperature up sufficiently. The curing takes longer, and
results in a hard cured product. In very warm weather, on the other
hand, it is difficult to keep the temperature down, and a “fired” fish
is sometimes produced, i.e. one which is half-cooked and soft. Such a
fish is clearly unsuitable for packing for export.
Generally speaking, the temperature of the smoke should be such that
the curing takes about 10 days.
After smoking, the fish are taken off the speets and selected according
to quality. Those which are large and perfect fetch a better price, and
command an entirely different market from those which are damaged or
broken.
During the smoking of red herrings, the fires are lit each night, and
simply allowed to burn themselves out.
=Bloaters.= There are two kinds of bloaters: those intended for the
home trade and those intended for the Mediterranean trade. For the home
trade the herring is lightly salted by immersing it in brine for two
hours or less. It is then dried in the smoke-house for one night, using
billets. Unlike “reds” or kippers, it is not cured by the smoke, but
simply dried. The bloaters for the Mediterranean trade are salted in
concrete tanks in exactly the same way as red herrings, but, instead of
being smoke-_cured_ for 10 days or so, they are simply smoke-_dried_
for two days.
=Kippers.= Kippering is the only process in the herring industry in
which the fish are split before curing. Fresh herrings (sometimes
over-day herrings) are bought early in the morning from the drifters
and taken to the curing yard. They are split down the back, close to
the backbone, and gutted and thrown into large, open baskets. The
basket and its contents (about 50 herrings) are then plunged into a
tank of running water, and violently agitated to wash blood and slime
from the fish. The fish are then thrown into brine in large tanks about
6 ft. by 5 ft. by 4 ft., until the tank is full. Salt is then sprinkled
on the surface, and the fish are left from half to one hour, according
to their size.
They are then hung on kipper speets. A kipper speet differs from a
bloater speet. It is a square bar of wood about 3-1/2 ft. long, and of
1 in. square cross-section. It is supported horizontally. The split
herrings are opened out and impaled upon hooks at intervals along
each side of the speet. Each speet in this way will carry about eight
or nine herrings a side. The speets are then stacked on racks in the
“loves” of the smoke-house, are smoked over-night, using fires of oak
turnings and sawdust, and are packed the next morning in boxes.
The herring is probably the most abundant food fish known. During the
autumn herring fishery of 1920, over 1,000,000 crans of herrings were
landed at Yarmouth and Lowestoft. If we assume that one cran measure
contains 1,000 herrings, we see that over 1,000,000,000 herrings were
caught in less than 4 months, and this probably represents only a
small fraction of the number present on the fishing grounds. In 1913,
11,762,748 cwts. of herrings, of value £4,412,838, were landed in Great
Britain. In the same year, the exports of herrings from the British
Isles were as follows—
Fresh herrings 1,464,296 cwts. worth £1,212,493
Cured herrings 8,797,106 „ „ 5,333,113
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Total 10,261,402 „ „ £6,545,606
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The quantity of herrings caught by other European countries is as
follows--
cwts. £
France (1911) 7,846,503 529,739
Germany (1913) Fresh 148,354 75,738
„ „ Salted 1,030,039 563,033
Holland (1911) 1,685,751 919,973
Norway (1912) 4,404,400 580,570
Denmark (1912) 845,295 140,051
Sweden (1912) 861,420 205,555
Belgium (1911) 13,000 5,000
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16,834,762 3,019,659
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