574 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



theories with regard to these questions. I have heard the opinion 

 advanced that during the last years a great number of codfish had been 

 observed near the coasts of Bear's Island and Spitzbergen, and that 

 this was the cause why the Loflfoden fisheries had been less successful 

 of late years. Some people even suppose that there is a certain connec- 

 tion between the Lofifoden and Newfoundland fisheries, a supposition 

 which does not need any refutation. In both these theories it is pre- 

 supposed that the codfish, as likewise the herring, undertakes long 

 journeys from distant seas, which in former times seems to have been a 

 favorite supposition, but which later researches have proved to be un- 

 tenable. It seems much more probable that the codfish as well as the 

 herring during the rest of the year stays not very far from the coast at 

 a great depth, which it only leaves when the growing roe and milt and 

 the consequent desire for spawning drives it in thick schools toward the 

 nearest coast. 



The circumstance that the codfish approach our entire long-stretched 

 coast, at least from Stat, at about the same time, seems to point in 

 this direction. If, as some suppose, the codfish came from near the 

 North Pole, they would appear sooner near Finmarken than further 

 south. This erroneous idea regarding the journeys of the codfish from 

 the Polar Sea has also led the well-known scientist Leopold von Buck 

 [Reise durch Norwegen^ " Journey through Norway," Vol. I) to make the 

 wrong statement, that the Loffoden codfish come from the north through 

 the narrow sound which separates the islands from each other — a state- 

 ment which any one who has had anything to do with the Loffoden fisheries 

 knows to be erroneous. Neither is the explanation given by G. P. Blom 

 {BemcerJcninger paa en Eeise i Nordland, " Remarks on a Journey to the 

 North Country") correct, that the codfish come through the sound 

 between Rost and Yaero. It seems settled therefore that at any rate 

 the chief mass of those codfish which make their appearance on the 

 landward side of the Loffoden Islands, comes through the large fiord 

 between Eost and the continent, and consequently as a general rule 

 pursues a northeasterly course. 



It must not be imagined that all the codfish schools follow exactly 

 one and the same direction when approaching the coast. To describe 

 it graphically the directions taken by the different schools must be 

 imagined as numerous parallel lines all going in a northeasterly direc- 

 tion from the great deep along the middle of the west fiord, the most 

 easterly and the most westerly of these lines being far distant from 

 each other. For there are many circumstances which seem to indicate 

 that those codfish which generally appear somewhat earlier near the 

 West Loffoden are not the same which further east approach the coast 

 of East Vaago, nor the same which are found still further east near the 

 east coast of Skraaven and the Molla Islands. This is proved by the 

 fact that large masses of codfish often appear at exactly the same time 

 at each of these places, and that there may be good fishing at the same 



