140 COASTAL FISH 



and were relaxing over a cup of coffee. The silence had been broken by 

 the sound of the winch hauling in the wire. Then suddenly the noise 

 ceased; the gear was up and the ship was again travelling full speed 

 ahead. We hurried on to the quarter-deck, which lay bathed in the beam 

 from the spotlight, while all around was pitch-black night. The trawl 

 came in over the rail and seemed to be well filled. The excitement was 

 intense; the contents might be mud. But it was not mud. Unloosed from 

 the bottom of the trawl fell a profusion of animals, which were quickly 

 sorted into the water-filled tubs and trays ready waiting. 



With the crew crowding round on the look-out for a coelacanth, or 

 perhaps a minor sea serpent, the experts made a rapid sur\'ey of the haul 

 and picked out the animals which called for most careful attention. While 

 the material was being taken into the laboratory, the gear was got ready 

 for another trawl, this time at a depth of about 700 metres. In the two 

 trawls that evening, which together took 170 minutes, we caught a total 

 of 769 fish, besides a similar number of invertebrates. We were delighted 

 with our luck, though it meant a night of feverish activity. No one who 

 has not tried it can realize what it means to handle such a mass of mate- 

 rial in such a few hours. It must all be preserved without delay, mostly 

 in formalin, and the vapour from the formalin soon makes the air in the 

 laboratory, which despite the hour is hot and heavy, extremely uncomfor- 

 table. But there is no avoiding it, as without preservatives the material 

 quickly begins to putrefy. Alcohol would be pleasanter but is too expensive. 

 Some of the animals can be deep-frozen. Since we had to be ready for the 

 next haul, most of the preserving bottles had to be taken to the hold, from 

 where it was always difficult to get them up again. Under such condi- 

 tions it was essential to identify the animals and label the bottles as accu- 

 rately as possible. A total of 769 fish may not sound a lot compared with 

 the number that would have been trawled in the North Sea, but in that 

 case it would have comprised only a few species. Let us see what sort 

 of fish we had caught. 



If we confine ourselves to the bottom fish, there were 576 specimens 

 belonging to 30 different genera, each represented by one species. An 

 analysis showed that there were 48 sharks (two genera), two salmonoids 

 (one genus), 147 representatives of the order Iniomi (two genera), seven 

 codfishes (three genera), 225 rat-tailed fishes (six genera), 14 eels (two 

 genera), three beryx-fishes (one genus), 54 brotulids (four genera), 

 12 mail-cheeked fishes (three genera), 23 flatfishes (two genera), and 

 51 angler-fishes (one genus). Easily the largest group, therefore, was the 

 rat-tailed fishes, both in number of individuals and genera. The second 



