A Meager Catch

“The cold oceans and seas are those in which fish, especially good edible fish, thrive the most and are the most prolific. The cod, the mackerel, the herring, the sole, the salmon, all belong to northern latitudes. . . . The fish [in the Mediterranean] is in general neither good nor abundant, which accounts for the Roman Catholic inhabitants of its shores consuming so large a quantity of the product of the herring and the cod fisheries of Northern Europe” ... a fisherman on the Riviera might pull in “but a few pounds weight of a minute transparent whitebait-looking fish, a few sardines and small red mullets, some diminutive sword-fish fry, and two or three crabs, the size of a five shilling piece, that have not been able to get out of the way.”