11 
HERRING INVESTIGATIONS. 
1—HERRING SHOALS. 
By B. STORROW. 
The object of the investigations during the past year was 
to obtain further evidence as to the age composition and develop- 
ment of the herring shoals already sampled, to obtain information 
with regard to the May, June and early July shoals which are 
known to occur under favourable circumstances off the north- 
west of Ireland, the Atlantic side of the Hebrides, to the west 
of the Orkneys and Shetlands, and also in Yarmouth waters, 
and to extend our knowledge of Irish herrings by the examination 
of samples from the Irish Sea. 
As in 1920, frequent examinations of the samples displayed 
for sale at the herring ring at North Shields fish quay were relied 
upon to give a knowledge—more extensive than could have been 
obtained by the examination of samples at the Laboratory—of 
the summer shoals of young developing herring. Autumn spawn- 
ing shoals have been examined from the grounds off Lerwick, 
Wick and Peterhead, and the East Anglian fishery yielded samples 
from Yarmouth in June, October, November and December. 
The spring spawning shoals off the Shetlands, the north coast 
of Sutherlandshire and the Firth of Forth were sampled in the 
early months of this year, and on account of the improvement 
of the Firth of Clyde fishery, samples were obtained from Girvan 
in February and early March. Samples from the Irish Sea were 
examined from the end of June to the beginning of September, 
and the spring spawning shoals as fished from Buncrana were 
dealt with in January and March. From Galway a sample was 
obtained in December. 
The unsettled state of Ireland made it impossible to forward 
any samples of the early summer fishery, May, June and early 
July, from the north-west coast, but Mr. G. P. Farran measured 
