postponed.

A financial wrangle between the company carrying out the experiment and the owners of the boat Anna C has brought an early end to the scheme.

It also rocked hopes that longline fishing could help the fishing industry survive.

Not enough fish were caught and there were also problems with the wages that the crew of the Anna C were receiving. But that has since been resolved.

Despite the early finish Fisheries Director Mr. John Barnes believes in some ways the experiment has proved a success.

And he believes there could be future experiments with longline fishing techniques off the Island.

Mr. Barnes said: "Experiments are funny things. You may not get one result you were looking for but find other interesting things. We are still looking at the data.

"Although the tuna catch was not what was expected, nobody thought there was such an abundance of swordfish available. We could look into techniques for catching swordfish in the future.'' Mr. Barnes said a couple of local fishermen had expressed an interest in smaller scale longline fishing.

But he said: "Others are saying they will never get involved with this type of fishing again.'' The idea of the experiment was to see if big-eye and blue fin tuna could be caught in abundance off Bermuda, to serve the Japanese market.

Many local fishermen were unhappy with the US-registered Anna C intruding in their waters even though none of the fish would have been sold here.

The ship was under lease to Ignis Foods of the United Kingdom, and was expected to stay between two and six months.

Just over a month into the trip the catch was so low that financial problems started to appear.

Mr. Barnes would not go into the problems, saying it was between the captain of the boat and the company.

However he did say he had heard of a problem with payment made to two crew members, but that had since been resolved. He said: "Ships' crews always seem to have a problem if they are taking a percentage of the take particularly if the take is low. A percentage of nothing is not much good.

"The crew members are still in Bermuda they have decided to take some vacation time.'' Mr. Barnes believes the failure of the experiment could have been due to the boat fishing in the wrong season.

He has had some indication that Ignis Foods may possibly send out one of its own boats instead of leasing a vessel.

But Bermudians will take some persuading before they will invest $500,000 in a technique which has so far failed to yield what was expected.

Skipper of the Anna C Mr. Junior Cross said he did not want to comment on the experiment, but he did point out he had lost money on the trip.

ANNA CEASED -- The Anna C 's long line fishing experiment has been put off.