17 



;ni>\\ir In tilis i|iieisti<iii is tliul tlie IjoUom .suils tlic plaice bettev m thc 

 former water thaii in tlie lutter«. The Hshermeii, however, have scarcely 

 taken thc trouble to examine what it is that forms the food of the plaice, 

 or how tiie conditiou of the bottom really i.s, i. e. to examine its wealth of foofl 

 suituble lur jilaiee; but accovding U> what I have seeii as yet I must say 

 that the bottoms of both waters are particularly suitable l'or plaice. I uiust 

 look somewhere elso. therel'ure, to tind the reason ol' their nne(|Ual growth, 

 and it seems to n\i' that nothing lies nearer thau to look for it in flir diffcr- 

 riif iHDitber of plaice that lives per Tønde Land in these two waters. 



We have seen that, at any rate this year (1895), there were no other 

 plaice in Thisted-Bredning tlian those 82,580 which had been placed there in 

 the spring 1895. When we suppose them equally distributed over the whole 

 of Ihat part of the expansion of the Fjord where plaice use to live (i. e. from 

 3 fathoms' deptli and outward) this gives ouly ca. 7 per Tønde Land. In those 

 expansions where the plaice is small, Venø Bugt and the expansions at Kaas, 

 Lavbjerg, and Nissum, there are many more per Tønde Land. Tliis is a faet 

 known by everybod}' who has been tishing there; but 1 shall try to give a little 

 doser information of it, beeause I should like also to show that it i>jjo.<rsiWp in 

 these matters to work in a somewhat more exact way than people generally do. 



We eau in various ways approximately calctdate the numher offish in these 

 wnteffs, a thing whicli, as far as I kno\\-, has never been attempted in the 

 sea, except by Hensen, who tried to make out the nuraber of grown-up plaice 

 in the western parts of the Baltic Sea, by counting all the eggs of plaice 

 tloating there in the spawning-time. When the number of these was divided 

 by the tigure which, according to his countings, must be supposed to represent 

 the average number of eggs of grown-up plaice. lie thought to get a tigure that 

 showed the number of the grown-up female plaice. I shall not liere, however. 

 enter further into a discussion of this very interesting experiment, and the 

 range of its results, much the more so, as this method cannot possibly be 

 employed in the Limfjord ; there are no eggs of plaice, or scarcely any, in the 

 water at any time of the year, as the plaice does not breed there, or at any rate 

 iloes so but very rarely. — My method will be understood from the folio wing. 



According to the present regulation the plaice-seine tishery in the Lim- 

 fjord connnences on the 1. September. From that day, when the weather did 

 not prevent them and it was not at holiday, the fishermen this year used 

 daily c. 60 plaice-seines in Venø-Bugt, and c 90 in Kaas-Bredning. besides a 

 great number of nets. The result of the daily tishery in these two expan- 

 sions of tbe Fjord, as also of thnt in Lavbjerg-Bredning from 7. October. is 



