414 MODERN SEA FISHING 



There are few fish more prolific than the cod. Buckland 

 counted nearly two million eggs in a fish of 1 1 \ Ibs. ; and yf Ibs. 

 of cod roe he found to contain 6,867,000 eggs. . Professor Sars 

 said that cod spawn seemed to ' fill the sea ' towards the end of 

 March near the Loffoden Islands, the great cod-fishing grounds 

 of Norway. There the shoals of cod are so numerous that they 

 are called fish mountains, and as the lines are being let down 

 the leads can be felt hitting against fish. It has been calculated 

 that if five million eggs is the average number contained by each 

 female cod, and that about half a shoal consists of females, one 

 of these enormous fish mountains of Norway will deposit in the 

 sea three hundred billion eggs. From such marvellous figures 

 as these one might, and people often have, jumped to the con 

 elusion that, however much we fished for cod, we could never 

 thin them out. A moment's consideration will show us that 

 each pair of cods probably only produces in the end one mature 

 fish, or thereabouts. If it were otherwise if, for instance, 

 every two cod out of their five million eggs produced two fish, 

 the numbers of cod in the sea would be doubled every year. 

 Anyone will soon see for himself, if he works out the figures, 

 that in a few years cod would be packed so thickly between 

 England and the Continent that the Channel could be crossed 

 without boats. 



We in England are far behind the rest of the world in 

 marine fish culture, particularly as regards cod, though the 

 Scotch Fishery Board has of late years taken some steps in 

 that direction. Norway, Newfoundland, and America are the 

 three countries where cod have been successfully reared. In 

 Newfoundland, at Dildo, Trinity Bay, is a very complete 

 hatchery mainly devoted to these fish. The salt water used in 

 it is pumped up from a depth of thirty feet, so that it may be 

 pure. The hatchery can contain about two hundred million 

 eggs. For some years the Newfoundland cod fishery has been 



