40 FISHERIES OF THE NORTH SEA 



between the years 1607 and 1611 he made 

 some discoveries of far-reaching extent in 

 his little 6o-ton ship whilst looking for a 

 North-West passage to China) imagine 

 when he sailed into this inland sea wherein 

 lay its commercial possibilities. 1 



Let us now turn to the other side of the 

 North Atlantic. Deep water runs almost 

 parallel to the Norwegian coast far too 

 deep for trawling." A bank rises, however, 

 about latitude 67 and supports the Lofoten 

 Isles, and on this high ridge great shoals 

 of cod-fish annually migrate and form the 

 spring fishery of northern Norway. To 

 the .north of the Scandinavian peninsula 



1 Failing in the attempt, he recommended his patrons to 

 turn to the whale fishing around Spitzbergen ; and so successful 

 did this become that the merchants of Holland seized eagerly 

 on the industry, and seventy years later 14,000 Dutch were 

 employed in the fishery. These wonderful creatures, as 

 essentially a mammal as a cow, by their great numbers at 

 that date should give us some idea of the fertility of the 

 northern seas. They support their huge bulk by straining 

 off the plankton from the water: the mouth being so 

 adapted that the water passes through the balleen plates the 

 whalebone and leaves the pteropods, crustaceans, etc., to 

 be swallowed ; and thus the largest of the world's animals 

 lives on the smallest insects. If the quantities of these 

 living substances are so great that a whale can support life 

 on them, it is very probable that there are edible fish living 

 in the same manner in the Arctic Ocean. Unfortunately 

 the whale is threatened with extinction in northern latitudes, 

 and the fishery has greatly decreased in importance. 



