80 
From various of the Annual Reports of the Fishery Board 
for Scotland it is clear that a period when the winter fishery of 
the east coast was highly productive occurred previous to 1896. 
During the last two months of 1885 large shoals of herrings were 
discovered where they had never been seen before. They were 
especially abundant off the Aberdeenshire coast, and in the Moray 
Firth and northward to the Pentland Firth they were in greater 
abundance than in any former winter. In the Annual Report 
for 1886 attention was drawn to the winter fishery, during the 
last two years, becoming an important industry nearly all along 
the east coast from the Firth of Forth to the Pentland, and during 
January to the end of March immense shoals of herrings were 
found along the coast, lying generally from one to six miles off- 
shore. This fishery was highly successful in 1887, and in 1888 
not so productive as in the two preceding years, whilst in 1889 
the fishery was still worse. From the fact that the herrings 
increased in size from 850 to the cran in 1887, 780 to the cran in 
1888, and 700 to 780 to the cran in 1889, there does not appear 
to have been any additions of young fish to the shoals, and it is 
possible the appearance off the east coast of such huge shoals 
was due to a migration in 1885. The size of the fish was great, 
and more in keeping with that of oceanic herrings than North Sea 
fish. The year 1885, reckoning the nine-year period from 1903, 
would coincide with the year of greatest tide generating force, 
and the interval between the herring catches of the eighties and 
those of 1902 to 1905 is approximately an eighteen year period, 
the same as Pettersson found for the Baltic fishery. There is 
this difference, that whilst the east coast maxima occur about 
1885 and 1904, the Baltic fishery then shows minima.* The high 
catches in Yarmouth waters in 1884 to 1886 further emphasisé 
the difference between the North Sea and the Baltic, and point 
to a periodic movement of shoals which benefits every nine years 
the British and Baltic fisheries alternately. If this alternation 
of periods holds good, our East Anglian fishery should have 
received the benefit of it during the past two years, and should 
benefit this coming season. 
The catches which have been made this year to the west of 
the Shetlands are probably also due in part to a migration which 
* Pettersson. Cliinatic variations in historic and prehistoric times page 21_ 
