In the Catalogue of Fishes of the North Sea, edited by the Conseil 

 perm. p. 1 'Exploration de la Mer (Publo Circ,:, n. 12), there is a record 

 of the occasional presence of tuna on the Mirman coastj a notice of which 

 I do not know the source, and which I judged to be extraordinary before 

 I came into possession of the following information, Dro Hoeg wrote me^, 

 in fact, that in August 1927, the geologist Dr, Th, Vogt saw in the 

 Laksefjord of Finmark, beyond Worth Cape, a school of about 20 tuna, and 

 he learned on the spot that the phenomenon was not a new one„ 



The tuna probably even frequ.ents the waters of Iceland, because the 

 bones of tuna have been found on those coasts ^ 



Do our tuna cross the Atlantic and is there an interchange of tuna 

 between Surope and America? It is taken in Canada (Nova Scotia) and on 

 the North Atlantic coast of the United States, where it even appears to 

 be very abundant. I have launched an appeal to the American sporting 

 clubs and in the Canadian Fisherman (ilarch 1927) in order to try to 

 recover hooks found in tuna on the other side of the ocean, but without 

 any success up to the present timeo 



The affirmation that the area characterized by means of tuna 

 carrying hooks, converging in the Mediterranean, is the habitat of a 

 single race of tuna may still appear too bold, but in reality only two 

 hypotheses are possibles either that of a single race, or that of the 

 coexistence of local races together with a race diffused over the whole 

 area. And the second hypothesis seems worthy of little attention. 



With regard to soraatometric investigations of tuna from different 

 regions, in 1913 I took multiple measurements on 50 tuna from the 

 fishery of S. Petri in Spain, measurements which I immediately repeated 

 on a similar number of tuna from Calabria and Tripolitania, without 

 finding variations sufficient to set apart distinct raceso I hope in 

 another work to re-examine my measurements in comparison with those taken 

 by Heldt on Tunisian tuna (Ann. Station Ocean. Salammbo, N. IV, 1927), 

 publishing my data; but there cannot be any difference between the tuna 

 of Tripolitania and the bordering Tunisia. 



This identity is also confirmed by the rates of growth, practically 

 equal for Spain and for different regions of the Mediterranean, while it 

 is kno^^^l that the growth of Atlantic and northern races, for fish in 

 general, is greater than that of the Mediterranean races. Thus even the 

 hypothesis brought forward by Steuer , of the possible existence of a 

 large Atlantic race and _a small Mediterranean race of tuna is eliminated . 



I note that such a belief is prevalent among many tuna fishermen 

 for the curious reason that in certain traps they catch small tuna and 

 in others large tuna, while in reality one encounters all of the inter- 

 mediate sizes. 



15 



