THE SALT-WATER FISHERIES OF BOHUSLAN. 203 



51. In order to get a more correct idea concerning this peculiar ming- 

 ling of great and small herrings towards the end of a fishing-period, it 

 will be necessary to consider another phenomenon which seems to be 

 connected with it, and which has hitherto been overlooked. It is known 

 from the last great Bohuslan herring-fisheries that during the last thirty 

 or forty years (therefore during more than half the period) the herrings 

 came to the coast for entirely different purposes than spawning, and 

 that the herrings, though not exactly being a mixture of great and 

 small fish, differed greatly in size, fatness, and general quality.'^ It then 

 became customary to call the full-grown herrings — whose number was 

 small — by a characteristic name, "'select herrings" or "fat herrings." 

 It was thought that impure water and noises had caused the herrings 

 to stay in the open sea, until after spawning they were in so weak a con- 

 dition that a strong wind would drive them towards the coast. 



A similar phenomenon has during the last ten years been observed in 

 the Norwegian spring-herring fisheries, so that instead of spawning her- 

 rings ("genuine spring-herrings") an inferior kind of herring has been 

 caught, which is called "mixed herring" or "new herring," the number 

 of full-grown herrings being exceedingly small; their spawning-season 

 seems moreover to come somewhat later than that of the genuine spring- 

 herring, which spawns in winter, and they might therefore possibly be- 

 long to a small race of coast-herrings which spawn in spring. Boeek 

 considered this phenomenon as a dark and mysterious enigma; G. 0. 

 8ars was the first who — as far as the Norwegian spring-herring fisheries 

 were concerned — examined the whole question from a scientific point of 

 view. As regards our (the BohuslJin) fisheries, it was scarcely possible 

 to suppose that the so-called "new herrings" were spring-herrings which 

 only visited our coast after having spawned, as the well-known char- 

 acteristics of the "new herrings" prevented their being considered as 

 spring-herrings whi<3h had but recently done spawning. It was there- 

 fore supposed that they were old and young fish which would not spawn 

 till the following winter, and which during the preceding autumn would 

 keep nearer the coast than the spring-h6rrings, which latter would, when 

 going to their new spawning-places in the outer deep coast-waters, 

 drive the "new herrings" towards the coast. But Sars has failed to ex- 

 plain why such a "driving-in" of great masses of "new herrings" did 

 not take place during the preceding period when the herrings came to 

 the coast for the purpose of spawning. It is tolerably certain that these 

 so-called "new herrings" are, to a great extent at least, such fish as 

 have not yet reached the age when they are capable of spawning ; but 

 as this would not apply to the great mass of the herrings, the supposi- 



'* See ^. Strom '' Sammenligning imellem de Norslce og Svenske Fiskerier" (Comparison 

 between the Norwegian and Swedish fisheries) in Dansk Museum, Jannary 1782, p. 7, 

 9-11, where he supi)08es that the aboYe-mentioned Bohusliiu herrings are the young 

 of the spring-herrings which have emigrated from the Norwegian coast, and are there- 

 fore the same as those which at that time were in Norway called "winter-herrings." 



