SEA FISHERIES 147 



Bank a journey which would take the unaided 

 fish several years to make alone we have shown 

 that their growth can be greatly hastened. 

 There is little doubt that the annual weight of 

 the plaice harvest from the North Sea could be 

 considerably increased by artificial redistribution. 



(8) I have considered at some length what we 

 have been able to discover by means of our 

 steam trawler about the plaice. Similar investi- 

 gations have been carried on, but not yet so 

 thoroughly, into the life histories, the distribu- 

 tion, the migrations and rate of growth of many 

 of the other food fishes, the cod, the haddock, 

 the sole, the turbot, and others. A complete 

 register of the catch of the large commercial 

 trawl has been kept each time the trawl has 

 been shot, that is, up to the present date, just 

 about 1,000 times. Some quarter of a million 

 measurements of fish other than plaice have been 

 made by our naturalists at sea, and we are surely 

 gaining a detailed and reliable knowledge con- 

 cerning the general features of the fish popula- 

 tion of different fishing grounds, and the size 

 and weight of the average fish at each period 

 of its age. 



(9) We have further made a number of special 



