Electronics Aid Fishing

In days past, commercial fishermen looking for a good haul had to rely oh local knowledge, or intuition, or plain luck if they wanted to come home with a hold full. But those days are over now. With the introduction of modern electronic sounding mechanism, the fisherman of today can literally scan the ocean depths, sight his catch as it cruises beneath his boat, and be sure, more or less, that when he trawls, the nets come up full.

Using the latest mechanism of this type, Mr Tony Bonica and his Mercury Belle sailed into Gisborne the other morning with a record catch of 29,0001bs of fish.

The Mercury Belle is now fitted with two types of fish detector. One records what is happening beneath the boat on a paper graph, like a barometric pressure recorder (see next page). The other is something like a small television screen, on which shoals of fish register like static marks as the boat passes over them. Both of the instruments indicate the depth at which the shoal is cruising.

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The Mercury Belle in the inner harbour.

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Unloading the record catch. Note ice on deck for chilling fish.