62 Part III —Twenty-jirst Annual Report 
the two grounds mentioned were made during the spawning-season, and 
that the fishes had assembled in the comparatively deep water and at a 
considerable distance from shore for spawning purposes, The catches 
in autumn and winter are less easy to explain; but there are instances 
of a similar phenomenon with some other species. 
In the Dornoch Firth, on 5th November, seven young pollack were 
taken in the small-meshed net around the cod-end of the otter-trawl. 
They measured from 128-169 mm. (5-63 inches), the mean size being 
149°7 mm. or 5f inches. In Kilbrennan Sound, in shallow water near 
shore, on 15th July four specimens were secured ranging from 53 to 61 
mm. (23-23 inches). ‘These sizes agree with a spring-spawning ; and as 
the young fishes are found in. numbers in the rock pools and zostera- 
beds in autumn, it is evident that they must cover, at some stage, a con- 
siderable distance in their shoreward migration if the spawning areas 
are situated as far from shore as the above facts indicate. 
Line (Molua molwa). 
Only 281 specimens of this species were procured, of which 252 were 
obtained in the comparatively few hauls in the deeper water, especially 
off Fair Isle, in sixty-five fathoms, in October, when as many as sixty- 
eight were taken in one haul, other hauls yielding thirty-two and 
twenty-six. It was much less common further south. A few were 
taken in the Moray Firth, especially in autumn and winter, and in the 
deep “ Dog Hole,” off Aberdeen, fourteen were procured, the haul in 
June for one hour and five minutes yielding seven. The range of size 
of the adults on the deep-water grounds is generally from three to four 
feet ; the largest measured there was fifty-eight inches and the smallest 
fifteen inches. 
Only four of the aggregate number were too small to be marketable, 
one off Aberdeen Bay in October, which measured eleven-and-a-half 
inches, and was got in water from thirty-six to forty-nine fathoms deep ; 
the other three were taken in the deep water, one of them in eighty 
fathoms. 
The trawlers get more ling than cod in the deep water east and north- 
east of the Shetlands, but the pruportion diminishes towards the shore, 
and also southwards in the North Sea. Two were taken in the nine 
hauls on the Fisher Bank in May. 
Hake (Merluccius vulgaris). 
The number of hake taken was also comparatively small, comprising 
altogether 440 specimens. Of these a few were got in Aberdeen Bay, 
mostly in summer; forty-nine in the Moray Firth, of which twenty-two 
were caught in a single haul in fifty fathoms about twelve miles from 
land in November; most of the others were got in August and July. 
The greater number, viz. 373, were procured on the deep-water grounds, 
and more particularly in the series of hauls south-east of Fair Isle, in 
sixty-five fathoms, in October, where ling were also most abundant. 
Here 339 were taken, the largest numbers in individual hauls being 
forty-five, forty-two, thirty-five, and thirty-four, and some were got in 
all the hauls but one, the average number caught per hour’s fishing 
being 3°7. 
The catches on this ground were, indeed, somewhat peculiar, inas- 
much as they included large numbers of hake, saithe, ling, and sharp- 
nosed rays, as well as many picked dog-fish, several lythe, Norway 
haddocks, and argentines—some more characteristic of grounds in the 
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