THE COD FISHEEIEkS NEAR THE LOFFODEN ISLANDS. C23 



iiey-sinoke of a large manufacturing city, indicated that dense schools 

 of young herring had now also reached east, and that not only the 

 whales bat also the cod were feeding on them. The same I found to be 

 the case at Brettesnces, where 1 staid a few days. At Skraaveu the 

 cod had not yet come near the shore, although it had begun to make its 

 appearance at the usual lishing-places, the algj© bottoms. 



At the same time that I made these investigations of the one and 

 two-year old cod I had also occasionally devoted my attention to the 

 tender young ones from last winter, but had found that this summer 

 was particularly unfavorable to these investigations. On account of 

 the unusually calm and steady weather, which lasted all summer, with 

 scarcely an interruption, the current, as is usual in such weather, was 

 generally going out of the Westfiord and carried everything which could 

 not resist its power out to the ocean. The water near the fishing-sta- 

 tions where I staid was, therefore, generally quite clear and trans- 

 parent without ever showing that rich life of different pelagian animals 

 which on a former visit I had noticed in these parts, and which cer- 

 tainly was closely connected with the occurrence of the young cod. I 

 had in the beginning of my stay at Skraaven occasionally noticed, es- 

 pecially after a short storm from the southwest, that these diminutive 

 fish, measuring scarcely a few lines in length, were playing about near 

 the surface of the water in the same places where I had observed them 

 on former occasions ; bat never again did I see such enormous numbers 

 as in 18G6. I often found that what I had taken for the young of the 

 cod were the young of other fish. A young fish distinguished by a 

 considerably shorter and plumper shape than the young of the cod 

 appeared on certain days in very large numbers in the places which had 

 formerly been frequented by the young cod. On other days the sea 

 would be so void of all life that one could row long distances without 

 even seeing a medusa. 



The period in the development of the young cod which this year I 

 desired to investigate was the transition from the roving life near the 

 surface of the water to the more stationary mode of life near the shore; 

 in other words, their change from pelagian to littoral animals. The 

 above-mentioned natural causes unfortunately prevented me from mak- 

 ing any exhaustive observations. I several times observed the peculiar 

 transition period when the young cod go under the medusoe. But these, 

 as well as later observations, were by far too isolated to get any reliable 

 corroborations of facts which I had ascertained by former observations. 

 Even toward the end of my stay, when the young cod had begun to 

 show themselves near the shore, their number was so small that 1 had 

 no hope of getting at anynew facts. The only additional fact was this, 

 that their passage to the deep begins much earlier than I had formerly 

 thought. In order to ascertain this 1 had a sort of fish-trap con- 

 structed, which I set in different places, varying in depth, and baited it 

 with refuse of fish. In this trap I caught, as early as the beginning of 



