— 157 — JOBS. SCHMIDT 



great depUis in our A I- 1 an I it- regions'. This can bo seen at Iceland and the Fscroes; 

 as many of our lines witii the "Tiior" on the S., W., N. and E. of the coasts of Iceland 

 show (see also the Charts IX, X), the pelagic fry produced on the Icelandic coastal banks 

 are distributed like a belt round the island, naturally somewhat broader in the sum- 

 mer than in spring nearer the spawning time, but on the whole narrow and for example 

 not spreading out much beyond the 200-meter line. The pelagic fry which are spawned 

 on the coastal banks have therefore no possibility of being carried away from 

 Iceland to other coastal banks but take part as already seen (see e. g. p. 20 — 23 and Charts 

 IX, X), in an anticyclonic movement round the island, which is of the 

 greatest importance for the distribution of the fry on the various coasts 

 of the island. 



At the Faeroes I cannot say whether there is a similar anticyclonic movement of the 

 pelagic fry, but the conditions are otherwise the same, as the pelagic fry spawned on the 

 coastal banks surround the islands like a belt, narrow or broader according as the spawn- 

 ing time is near or far, and nothing in our investigations would indicate that the fry 

 leave the region to any essential extent with the exception perhaps of the banks S. of the 

 islands, where the conditions may resemble those existing N. of the British Isles. In con- 

 trast to the remaining parts of our Atlantic regions, i. e. the northern part of the British 

 Isles to the Channel and Bay of Biscay, where the coastal banks form a continuous whole, 

 Iceland is to be considered in this connection as an isolated area, from which 

 the pelagic fry are not carried away in any great degree, neither to the Atlantic, nor to 

 the Norwegian Sea or North Sea. As we shall soon see, the conditions on the north and 

 west of the British Isles stand in the greatest contrast to this. 



The species spawning in the deeper water south of Iceland and west of the Faeroes 

 (thus Gad. Poutassou, Gadic. argenteus, Brosmius etc.) have a greater chance of escaping 

 inclusion in the anticyclonic movement round Iceland and of being carried with the At- 

 lantic Stream in a north-easterly direction over the Submarine Eidge between Iceland and 

 the Faeroes, and this actually happens to a certain extent, especially immediately to the 

 north of the Faeroes and especially in the case of the Poutassou (see Chart IV also I and 

 VIII). All seems to indicate however that the movement here is only very slow, and 

 there is certainly no doubt that it cannot in any way compare in extent and importance 

 with the movement, likewise in a north-easterly direction, from the more southern regions 

 (namely, west of the British Isles) north round Scotland into the Norwegian and North 

 Seas (cf. also fig. 14—15, p. 158—59.) 



The existence of the movement mentioned has long been known , and the Charts 

 show how the Atlantic Stream coming from the west round the north of the British Isles 

 sends a large branch into the Norwegian Sea, where it runs along the Norwegian coast, 

 whilst a second smaller branch passing the north coast of Scotland bends round and runs 



1 According to Johan Hjort (see e. g. Aarsberetning vedkomraende Norges Fiskerier, 2. Hefte 1907, 

 e. g. p. 22, 25, 27) the conditions are different in the Norwegian Sea, just on account of the direction of 

 the currents, and large masses of the pelagic fry of the cod, haddock and coalfish may be carried out 

 over great depths in the Norwegian Sea. 



