CHAPTER XVI 



NOKWEGIAN INVESTIGATIONS ON THE HADDOCK 



On pp. 27-34 of his paper ' Some Kesults of the International 

 Ocean Researches ', pubHshed in EngUsh by the Scottish 

 Oceanographical Laboratory, Edinburgh, in 1908, Dr. Hjort 

 discusses the earher Norwegian investigations into the haddock. 

 It is interesting to note that this paper is not even mentioned 

 by Jenkins in his Sea Fisheries (1920) : indeed, he says nothing 

 of the haddock work of the Norwegians. The latter found that 

 newly-hatched haddock drift, especially in July, right out of 

 the North Sea in myriads. Some are driven towards the 

 Norwegian coast, some into the Skagerrak, and some north into 

 the ' Northern Sea ' between Iceland and Norway. By 1907, 

 Dr. Hjort stated, enough material had been collected in Norw^ay 

 * to put us in possession of the whole life-history of the haddock '. 



Trawling experiments at Aalesund, on the west coast of 

 Norway, in 1906, combined with scale reading (wdiich is, Dr. Hjort 

 says, quite easy, though an English investigator has found some 

 difficulty in reading the North Sea scales after the third and 

 fourth year), give the rate of growth as follows : 



Inches. 



With the young fish were caught older haddock running as 

 large as 30 inches. - It was estabhshed that in Norway fishermen 

 systematically fished for and caught haddock from two to 

 eleven years old ; that these fish grew about 4 inches a year for 

 the first year or so on the average ; that growth was irregular ; 

 and that fish spawned in one year would on the whole grow 

 much less quickly than those spawned in another. As the fish 

 approached eleven years in age the annual growth became 

 smaller and smaller. The largest fish examined were some 

 haddock from the Barents Sea landed at Hull. They were 

 18 to 30 inches long and from nine to fourteen years old. Their 

 scales showed * very slight growth and a poor structure — the 

 characteristics of old ago '. 



The Norwegians examined a mass of haddock material from 



