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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



NORTH SEA AREA LIMITED 



The territory which constitutes the 

 North Sea fishing grounds is strikingly 

 Hmited in area compared to its impor- 

 tance. Its total area is less than 130,000 

 square miles, only a little larger than the 

 State of New Mexico. The Dogger 

 Bank is the center of it all^ — the Charing 

 Cross of the sea, so to speak. To the 

 south of Dogger Bank is Silver Pit, Sole 

 Pit, Dowsingwell, Brown Ridge, Goowin 

 Sands, the Sandetti, the Ruytingen, the 

 Schwartzebank Borkum-Riff, and Helgo- 

 land-Bucht. To the north are Great 

 Fisher Bank, Little Fisher Bank, the 

 Long Forties, and Outer Pit — all famous 

 fishing grounds. 



Many conditions conspire to make the 

 North Sea the favorite ground of food 

 fishes. Through the submarine channel 

 passing between the Shetland and the 

 Faroe Islands it receives the warm waters 

 of the Atlantic. A strong current of 

 warm Mediterranean water sweeps out 

 through the Strait of Gibraltar, curves 

 around to the north, and finally, in part 

 at least, joins the current that passes 

 into the North Sea above the Shetland 

 Islands. A current also comes down 

 from the north, giving cooler surface 

 water, and the brackish, slow-flowing 

 German rivers bring down a wealth of 

 food. Coming in from the channel end 

 of the North Sea are other warm waters, 

 and the two tidal waves, the one from the 

 north and the other from the south, meet 

 off the Dogger Bank and before the 

 Thames, creating vast eddies and back- 

 washes, which deposit immense quanti- 

 ties of fish food for food fishes. 



A HOME-EOVING CREATURE 



The strong influences of heredity upon 

 fish make them stick to the habitats and 

 habits of their progenitors with the ut- 

 most fidelity, and the development of the 

 most highly organized fisheries industry 

 in the world has not sufficed to change 

 their homes or their habits. How closely 

 they adhere to the habits of their an- 

 cestors is strikingly shown by a Canadian 

 experiment. Salmon were accustomed to' 

 ascend the Nicola River to spawn, and it 

 was noted that they always followed the 

 one channel around a midstream island 

 on their upward trip. A dam was built 



across this channel, while the other was 

 left free. When the fish came to this 

 point they would not take the other chan- 

 nel at all ; they seemed to conclude that 

 if they could not swim exactly where 

 their ancestors had swam there was no 

 use of their trying to go farther, and so 

 they turned back. 



It has been estimated that there are 

 some 19,000 species of fish in the world, 

 and some of the food fishes found in the 

 North Sea are among the most prolific 

 of them all. For instance, the turbot 

 sometimes spawns 9,000,000 eggs a sea- 

 son, the codfish 6,000,000, the mackerel 

 700,000, the red gurnard 400,000, and the 

 brill 200,000. The sole spawns 85,000 

 eggs and the herring as high as 50,000. 

 Furthermore, petticoat government seems 

 to rule in fish-land, for investigation 

 shows that among the food fishes of the 

 North Sea the females are in the vast 

 majority. In the case of the conger they 

 are 19 to i, while in the case of herring 

 there are three females for every male. 



EISH culture's ADVANTAGES 



The marine fisheries of Europe are 

 vastly more important to European coun- 

 tries than those in United States waters 

 ever can be to the American people. This 

 is so in the first place because we have 

 no fishing grounds in the Atlantic Ocean 

 comparable to those of the North Sea in 

 richness. It is so in the second place 

 because the time when the per capita 

 consumption of fish in the United States 

 will equal that of Europe lies in that re- 

 mote future when the population of 

 North America shall equal that of Eu- 

 rope in density ; but it is also true because 

 no other nation on earth has had the fore- 

 sight to stock its inland waters as the 

 United States has done. 



Last year the United States Bureau of 

 Fisheries distributed more than three and 

 a half billion baby fish in the inland 

 waters of the country and half a billion 

 eggs. This great work of artificial fish 

 culture has been carried forward for 

 years in such a way that our fish supply 

 now comes in no mean proportion from 

 our rivers, bays, and lakes. Europe has 

 neglected fish culture ; consequently, when 

 her outlying waters are cut off from the 

 fisherfolk, the supply is at an end. 



