COMMITTEE B — DECEMBER 1903 (10) 
difficulties upon the Convener in preparing general summaries of the results of the 
investigations. It appeared to him to be a matter of great importance that the trawling 
appliances of the various research steamers should be assimilated sufficiently to 
enable the results of the various vessels to be combined for comparative purposes. 
Until those differences in methods and apparatus had been removed which 
prevented exact comparisons between their trawling experiments, they were 
working to all intents and purposes independently, and were losing many of those 
advantages of co-operation which were the essence of the international scheme. 
The Committee had an important task before it to increase the solidarity of 
the work. 
(3) A further point in this connection was the desirability of selecting certain 
fixed grounds upon which trawling investigations with identical apparatus should 
be carried out periodically. The ideal thing would be to carry out monthly 
investigations over all the fixed stations. Quarterly investigations over the most 
important grounds at any rate seemed indispensable. 
(5) As regards the marking experiments, there was a risk of a certain amount 
of duplication and overlapping in this work in certain areas, and it seemed desirable 
that they should fix beforehand the areas and seasons in which marked fishes 
were to be liberated by each country during the next year. A further pomt was 
the desirability of making experiments m the transplantation of marked plaice from 
one ground to another, in order to trace differences in the rate of growth, and to 
test the question whether in the North Sea there would be any advantage to the 
fisheries if such transplantation were carried out on a commercial scale. Fish 
might be removed from an overpopulated district to areas either where the fish were 
naturally less abundant or where the stock was depleted by over-fishing. They might 
do for the North Sea what Dr Prrersen had done for the Lim Fjord. The first 
thing to do was to show by scientific experiments whether the transplanted plaice 
would grow under the new conditions "more quickly than if left undisturbed in 
their natural regions. If all the countries around the southern part of the North 
Sea were to carry out experiments of this kind at the end of the present winter, 
definite results, whether favourable or unfavourable, would be attained by the 
end of the next year. 
Marked plaice might also be transplanted to certain rough grounds where 
trawling was impracticable, and the percentage of recoveries compared with that 
