DISTRIBUTION OF FISH AND OTHER ANIMALS. 27 



distribution of food. One locality serves as spawning grounds, another as the " nurseries," in 

 which the young fish congregate in enormous numbers, and still other localities serve as 

 feeding grounds at different times of the year. If we omit the more active migratory fish 

 (such as the Herring), many of the others, of more sedentary habits (such as the flat fishes), 

 probably never leave the Irish Sea throughout their lives. Their spawning grounds are in the 

 deep water round the Isle of Man, their "nurseries" on the Lancashire coast, and their 

 feeding grounds'elsewhere over the area according to the season and the age of the fish. 



FlG. 7. Mersey Shrimping Grounds.* 



The banks and channels off the mouth of the Mersey (see Fig. 7), and the similar 

 areas along the coast by Southport and Blackpool, from the Dee to Morecambe Bay, 

 form one of the most remarkable flat-fish nurseries in the world. It is also, however, 

 a famous shrimping ground, and, without at the moment going into the question of how- 

 far the one fishing industry is interfering with the prosperity of the other, there can be 

 no doubt of the fact that the operations of the shrimpers at present result in an 

 enormous destruction of young fish. It is a common experience on these grounds at 

 certain times of year to catch thousands of very small fish at each haul, in the proportion 

 of about a thousand young fish for each quart of shrimps taken. 



* From the article by Johnstone and Jenkins in our last " Sea-Fisheries Laboratory Report, 1901." 



