The North Atlantic Fisheries, 1100-1976 - University of Hull

1665-1667). 189 The Dutch government once again supported the
fisheries when in 1740 the Danish authorities decided that the territorial
waters around Iceland should be more strictly obeyed. A few Dutch cod
fishermen were held and brought into port. Two warships convoyed the
fishermen in 1741 and the next year the conflict was over. 190
During the first half of the sixteenth century local communities with
fishing interests combined their efforts as soon as Charles V and Philip II
involved the Low Countries in their wars. They asked for armed
protection of their fishing vessels, which was mostly granted. This
became more or less normal procedure. The outlay was generally paid by
the parties concerned. Contacts with the naval authorities continued in
the following centuries. In time of war, it was quite common for
warships to escort the herring fleets, at least when requested. The coastal
and cod fisheries mostly had to take care of themselves. During the wars
against the Dunkirk privateers it regularly proved to be impossible to
secure adequate protection. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it
became quite common procedure for so-called fishery inspection ships
of the navy to visit the luggers in the fishing areas in order to make sure
that regulations were being obeyed, rivalries were kept under control and
smuggling was prevented.
A sideline, though of some interest, is government acceptance of a
responsibility for the fishing industry at large. That happened in 1888,
when the biologist Dr. P.P.C. Hoek was appointed scientific advisor in
fishery matters. Hoek founded fish biology as a subdiscipline of biology,
stimulated international co-operation as to the resources of the sea, and
voiced an early warning against overfishing. He was one of the initiators
of the International Council of the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) in 1902.
Hoek established small research centres and research vessels,
culminating in the Netherlands Institute for Fisheries Research (RIVO),
from 1957 based in IJmuiden. 191
State Interference and State Abstinence
The decline of the herring fishery in the late seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries led to provincial and national protection and financial support.
189 Wilson, Profit; Van Vliet, Vissers, 145-50.
190 Simon Thomas, Onze IJslandsvaarders, chapter 7.
191 De Groot, Een eeuw.
114