135 



Fishermen's Classes and could not go to sea except for a 

 day at the week end between the beginning of March and 

 the beginning of Ma}'. On March 16th, Mr. John 

 Wright, the Chief Fisherj^ Officer at Fleetwood, came 

 over to Piel and trawled in Barrow Channel for plaice, 

 which were broiight into the Hatchery and marked there. 

 The fish were then kept alive in the tanks for a day, and 

 were put on board the " John Fell '" and taken out to 

 beyond the Morecambe Bay Lightship, where they were 

 liberated. For about a week nothing was heard of these 

 fishes, and then they began to come back into Barrow- 

 Channel again, and within the first two months 16 marked 

 plaice from this experiment alone were caught in this 

 area. It is not, as might appear, the case that this 

 abundance of recaptures depends simply on excessive 

 fishing, for practically all these fishes were caught by 

 two or three men working stake nets. It is evident that 

 there was a general inshore migration towards Morecambe 

 Bay, and that most of the fishes participating entered the 

 Channel. Two fish travelled jNforth along the Cumberland 

 coast, and crossing the head of the tide were caught in 

 the Solway Firth. I think it probable that the fish, after 

 leaving the Lightship ground, struck the Cumberland 

 coast and most of them came South but that a few went 

 North. 



It will be seen from Chart L, where these results are 

 represented by the blue circles, that quite a number of 

 marked fish were caught on the ground round the Light- 

 ship. But it will also be seen that these fishes were mostly 

 caught there three months after liberation, and taken 

 together with the results of the BlacJ^pool Experiment, 

 this indicates that the fish, after finishing their first 

 inshore migration and feeding for a time on the shallow 

 water grounds, began to migrate outwards again. 



