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The principal results of the planned investigations have now been very 

 briefly stated, but the mere mention of these results will not suffice to do 

 justice to the success of the international co-operation so far as the fishery is 

 concerned. Co-operative work systematically continued has been of the 

 greatest value in the collection of information and facts bearing on the manner 

 of life of the fish, their capture, and the work of the fishermen, etc. The re- 

 ports and special articles published on these subjects, both those issued by the 

 Central Council and those which have appeared in the individual countries, 

 contain a wealth of important results such as no other decade in the literature 

 of the subject can show. Particular attention is also here drawn to the fact, 

 that not only has our knowledge with regard to the fishery conditions of the 

 North Sea and adjacent parts of the North Atlantic, the Skagerak etc. made 

 considerable progress, but much has also been attained by means of the 

 international co-operation with regard to the fishery of the Baltic. This is 

 true of the most important Baltic fish — the plaice, which also here is of 

 considerable importance, the salmon, the eel, the cod, etc. — but more especi- 

 ally of the fishery itself, with regard to which monographs have been published 

 by the representatives of the Baltic states. Then also, the Belt fishery at least 

 has further profited by the better organisation of fishery statistics, which the 

 international organisation advocated from the first, and to some extent also 

 carried out. 



A brief statement of what has been done in this sphere in a general 

 way should not be omitted from this review. Already in the Christiania 

 programme mention is made of the great value attaching to uniform critical 

 catch statistics. The point of view adopted is the undoubtedly correct one 

 that, if the International Investigation of the Sea is really to succeed in pro- 

 moting the fishing industry, and assist in the establishment of an economically 

 correct basis for the international fishery yield, it is necessary also to study 

 the question of fishery statistics, this being in the long run the only reliable 

 method of judging, how far the fluctuations in the sea's production of food 

 fish are periodical, whether any decrease in the production is taking 

 place, or has taken place or not, whether changes in this production stand in 

 any relation to changes in the methods of the fishing industry — the very 

 questions which must be answered, before it is possible to say how far the 

 present exploitation of the sea can be regarded as rational, or if alterations 

 are demanded in its methods. 



The fishery statistics have, therefore, to furnish the indispensable mate- 



