Alioto

This is an appeal from an interlocutory decree in admiralty holding at fault appellant’s tuna fishing boat, The Dependable, for a collision between it and another tuna fishing boat, The Taiyo. The amount of damage remained for further determination.

The collision occurred at a time when both vessels were fishing for tuna on the Outer Gorda Bank, about six miles southeast of Gorda Point and twenty-two miles northeast of Cape San Lucas, at the end of the Lower California Peninsula, on the morning of July 16, 1938 at about 10 o’clock a. m. The weather was clear, there was no wind, and the sea was calm with a slow swell. On that morning both vessels had previously successfully fished schools of tuna. With respect to the rights of tuna fishing boats fishing on the same ground and seeking to take from a certain school approached by the boats, it is admitted by both appellant and appellees that “there is a universal and long established custom among tuna fishermen in waters of the Pacific Ocean, generally known to and observed by such fishermen, to the effect that whenever a school of fish is sighted by two or more vessels, the first vessel to come up to said school has the prior right…