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An Experiment in the Transplantation of Plaice from 

 the Barents Sea ("White Sea") to the North Sea. 



By 

 George T. Atkinson, 



Assistant Naturalist at the Lowestoft Lalioratory. 



About midnight on 26th June, 1908, at the close of a voyage to the 

 "White Sea fishing grounds, undertaken by Mr. A. E. flefford and 

 myself in the Hull steam trawler Princess Louise, H 837, Captain 

 Turner of that vessel did me the great favour of taking a short haul to 

 procure plaice for transplantation to the North Sea. 



Object of the Experiment. — The object of this experiment was to 

 test if it were possible for plaice to survive such physical changes as are 

 necessarily involved in this great change of habitat, and to see further 

 if they would display any feature of growth. 



The result has been that not only do the fish appear to have survived, 

 but they have grown in a most remarkable manner. The rate of 

 growth shown by the last five specimens recaptured is much greater 

 than that of North Sea plaice of the same sizes and sex, which have 

 been marked in the same way and set out again on the grounds 

 where they have been caught. The growth has been many times 

 faster than that indicated by the otoliths of plaice in the portion 

 of the Arctic Ocean from which they were brought.* This unusually 

 rapid growth has been accompanied by considerable improvement of 

 the fish as a marketable commodity. 



The object of the voyage in the Princess Louise was to continue 

 the investigations, commenced in the Roman., of the conditions of the 

 plaice fishery in the Barents Sea.f It had been arranged to again 

 accompany the Bomcm, H 948, but as Captain Leighton sailed a day 

 earlier than was intended, he kindly arranged for Mr. Heftbrd and 



* As an illustration of the extremely slow growth which obtains in these northern waters, 

 I have in my possession a photograph by my colleague, Mr. R. A. Torld, of ten otoliths of 

 as many fish of the VIII group (in these cases fish just nine years old), five of these fish are 

 from the North Sea and five from the Barents Sea ; 47, 48, 52, 52, and 54 cm. were the 

 lengths of the former, which were all mature females : the lengths of the latter three im- 

 mature females and two mature males were only 30, 30, 32, 27, and 29 cm. 



t Journ. Mar. Biol. Assoc., VIII, 1908, i'. 71. 



