Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

102 THE DOLPHIN—ICHTHYOPHAGI—THE TUNNYladders still used in Austria and Italy (of which Keller givesan illustration i) and the Turkish dalian of the Bosporus representthe modern scaffold. Oppian [hal., III. 630 ff.) andiEhan{de nat. an., XV. 5) note the enormous hauls made by the fishermenwhen " the army " of the Tunnies set out on its migrations,company by company.The nets used for the capture of Tunny by the Italians(at the present day) are fixed : made of thick cord, withoutleads, and sometimes as much as 250 fathoms long, and 15fathoms deep, thus recalling Oppian's " a Town of Nets." 2Special regard has to be paid now as of old, in fixing theirposition, to the course frequented by this eminently migratorygenus in its annual passage from the Atlantic to the BlackSea and Sea of Azov, a distance of 2800 miles and back again.The same route is always travelled by an ever living stream ofundiminished fulness, furnishing food to milhons on theMediterranean.To the Phoenicians and to the Spaniards of old the Tunnyranked high as a commercial asset. The Tyrian tunny wasspecially prized ^ ; its salsamentum travelled far and wide.Rhode (p. 38) points out, however, that this originally wasdesigned not as a delicacy, but as a preventive against scurvyand other diseases attendant on the long voyages which thefar-flung commerce of the Phoenicians demanded.The older port, Sidon, got its name from its wealth of fish,which in Phoenician was called Sidon, ^ while Tyrus, one of theearUest inhabitants of the younger port, traditionally inventedfishing tackle. 5 Many Spanish towns, as their coins attest,notably those of Gades and Carteia, owed much of theirprosperity, if not their existence, to the salt or pickled fish1 O. Keller, Die Antike Tierwelt, vol. ii. 388, fig. 122. This work(published at Leipzig a year before the War) unfortunately came into my handsonly when I had practically finished my book, and thus I have been precludedfrom the more copious use of the Fische portion, which I should have desiredand which it would certainly have demanded. The seventy pages deahngwith fish form a compact treasure-house of ichthyic literature, but owingperhaps to their scope lack piscatorial interest.* Faber, Fisheries in the Adriatic, London, 1883.• According to Pollux, VL 63.« Justin, XVIII. 3. 2.' Cf. Ezekiel, XXVI. 5, 14.