APPENDIX E: HBINCKE _ 36 — 



At the beginning of May, eggs and larva3 of wWting occurred at almost all the sta- 

 tions, and the eggs so outnumbered the larvae, that the end of the spawning period seemed 

 far distant. The greatest quantities were found on the northern part of the Great Fisher 

 Bank at Stations V and VI with 98 and 204 eggs and larvae per square meter, then at 

 Stations IV and II west of the Great Fisher Bank and on the Dogger Bank, with 44 eggs 

 and larvse per square meter. 



At the end of May, eggs were still found, though in smaller quantities. A maximum 

 with 59 eggs and larvae per square meter occurred at Station V in the Skager Kak. Some 

 eggs were still found even in the middle of June 1904, in the southern North Sea. The 

 larvae were in all possible stages of development, even to the fully formed little fish. Young 

 forms of 20 to 23 mm. were taken already at the end of April. 



We took the whiting eggs at Heligoland from the end of January to the end of May. 



The 0-group of the whiting (first year). As in all gadoids, so with the 

 whiting, the boundary-line between the later larval stages and the fully formed young-fish 

 cannot be sharply drawn; it lies between 15 and 20mm. in length. We have found these 

 youngest stages of the fully formed whiting and the larger fish of the 0-group in the 

 summer months, especially from the beginning of June onwards, everywhere in the 

 entire region under our survey, from the mouths of the Elbe and Weser to the 100 m. 

 line and mostly, in greater quantities than any other young of the food-fishes. We took 

 them in great quantities both with our young-fish trawl (up to 1000 and more in half an 

 hour) and our pelagic nets ; once, we took 900 specimens in an hour with our three-otter 

 boards net. The following remarkable phenomen occurred in our numerous hauls in 

 July. The smaller and younger whiting of 2 to 5 cm. in length, were taken pelagically 

 in far greater numbers than on the ground, where, as a matter of fact, they were very 

 rarely observed under 4 cm. in length, and only from 5 cm. and more in great quantities. 

 For example, amongst the 900 whiting taken in the great haul with the three-otterboards 

 net, as mentioned above, only about 50 specimens were from 6 to 7 cm. in length, all 

 others measured only 2 to 5 cm. the most 3 and 4 cm. Conversely, of several thousands 

 of young whiting, which we caught in 2 hauls with our young-fish trawl on the southern 

 Mud Bank in July 1903, only a small percentage was under 5 cm. in length, most meas- 

 ured 5 to 8 cm. Further, it was found to be characteristic of many of our pelagic young 

 fish hauls, that the largest fish taken in them were almost always whiting, and that our 

 three-otterboards net caught those from 20 to over 25 cm. by no means seldom. 



We may therefore conclude, that the whiting of the North Sea retains the 

 pelagic habit for a very long period in its youth, even longer than the haddock 

 and longer than the cod especially, and that it often rises in great quantities into the 

 upper water-layers after its first descent to the bottom, even in the older stages. In agree- 

 ment with this, we have noticed in our aquarium, that young cod and whiting of the 

 0-group show a characteristic difference in their habits. Whilst the young cod prefers to 

 remain on the bottom and to seek hiding-places between stones and plants, the whiting 

 always moves about more in the middle and upper water-layers. 



It is well known, that the young whiting, so long as they are still small and lead a 

 pelagic life, are almost always found together with jellyfish {mosüy Cyanea). Whether 

 this characteristic resort of the young-fish, close beside the jelly-fish, even between their 

 tentacles — as we have often remarked in our aquarium and sometimes near the surface in the 



