INTRODUCTION TO THE CANADIAN FISHERIES EXPEDITION, 



1914-15. 



By Jo MAX Hjort, 

 Director of Fisheries for Xorway, and Head of the Expedition. 



(With Five Figures.) 



In the course of my researches in Xorth European waters, it has frequently 

 occurred to me th^t many problems of long standing in the sphere of fishery and 

 marine investigation might perhaps best be solved by making a comparison between 

 the two separate areas of sea which contain the same forms of animal life, viz., the 

 waters of northern Europe, and the range of sea from the coast of Labrador and 

 Canada to that of Maine. 



In 1910, I was invited by Sir John Murray, himself Canadian-born, to make 

 a cruise on board the ss. Michael Sars, belonging to the Norwegian Fisheries Depart- 

 ment, the voyage in question extending over the greater part of the northern Atlantic. 

 Here, naturally enough, the same idea once more asserted itself, and we both felt that 

 it would be desirable to undertake, at any rate, some slight preliminary investigations 

 in the Canadian waters, and there make test of the same methods of research as have 

 been developed, during the course of the past generation, in the fishery investigations 

 of northern Europe, and the International Council for the Exploratiion of the Sea. 



As mentioned in my account of this voyage^ it was also our desire " to set 

 our course from the Azores to the Bermudas, and thence on to Boston, finishing with 

 a series of short zig-zag sections between the land and the edge of the coast-banks, 

 till we reached Newfoundland. "We should in that case have been able to study the 

 remarkable transition that occurs on passing from the almost tropical conditions of 

 the Sargasso sea to those of the icy Labrador stream, which creeps southward along 

 the Labrador coast from Baffin's bay to Newfoundland, and even farther south. Tlie 

 short time at our disposal made this impossible, and we were compelled to cross from 

 the Azores to the nearest coaling station, namely, Newfoundland, and then make for 

 home." 



On the way from the Sargasso sea to Newfoundland, however, we had occasion, 

 after all, to make certain observations, the results of which still further convinced mo 

 of the great and peculiar interest attaching to such a comparison as that mentioned. 

 Indeed, this last cruise in itself sufficed to show in what unique degree the waters off 

 the coasts of Canada and Newfoundland were suited to the study of those very prob- 

 lems which have ranked foremost in the Scandinavian marine researches of the past 

 generation, to wit, the relation between the distribution and life-cycle of the organisms, 

 on the one hand, and the prevalent physical conditions in the sea on the other. 



On this cruise, from the Sargasso sea to the Newfoundland waters, we encountered 

 the sharpest and most remarkable transitions between warmer and colder water layers, 

 and in the closest connection therewith, a constantly coinciding occurrence of plant 

 and animal communities, which were now of tropical, now of distinctly northern 

 boreal character. It was these observations of ours which furnished me with the lead- 

 ing principles on which the investigations described in the following pages were subse- 

 quently based. And as, moreover, these earliest discoveries of ours afford a kind of 



1 Sir John Murray and Johan Hjort : The Depths of the Ocean. Macmillan, I-ondon. 

 1912. Chapter III, pages 99 and following. 



xi 



