ON THE MIGRATIONS AND THE GROWTH OF PLAICE. 145 



fishes in the Limfjord, and recovered 51, but believed that the 

 proportion would have been increased if the fishermen had 

 been more interested, and also that many of the labels had 

 been lost. They were immature plaice, and were caught 

 again in the Limfjord, The results therefore did not show 

 anything definite with regard to migration. The plaice made 

 good progress in growth, however, and recently attempts have 

 been made to transplant plaice from the North Sea into the 

 Qord. 



The staff of the Plymouth Laboratory have, in addition to 

 the extensive experiments made in conjunction with the other 

 North Sea powers, taken the opportunity of the trawling 

 experiments on the coast of Devon to mark and liberate a 

 number of plaice. The results have been published by Mr. 

 Garstangf. During 1901 and 1902 420 plaice were labelled, 

 and 121 were recovered, or 29 per cent. Mr. Garstang 

 gathers from the experiment : — i. Plaice below 8 inches in 

 length are practically confined to the inshore waters of the 

 bays at all seasons of the year. 2. On attaining a length of 

 8 inches the plaice in Teignmouth Bay and Torbay tend to 

 emigrate in summer into Start Bay, and in winter over the 

 offshore grounds. He saw reason for stating that the larger 

 plaice migrated to the offshore grounds in November and 

 December, and returned in March and April. The district 

 thus appears to be self-contained, but were we to look for an 

 indication of a general movement in a definite direction, such 

 as resulted in the case of the Scotch experiments, we would be 

 justified in saying that if it does occur it is an up-channel one. 



The opportunity was taken last year at the Northumber- 

 land trawhng experiments to label and liberate a number of 

 the plaice and a few other flat fish, and a preliminary report 

 on the results was published*. The label used was the modi- 

 fied form of the Petersen label adopted in the international 

 investigations. About 200 of the fish were marked with labels 

 sent from the Lowestoft Laboratory, the remainder with smaller 



t Jour. Mar. Biol. Assoc, Dec, 1903. 

 * 1903. Rep. to Northd, Sea Pish. Comni. on Scientific Investigations, 



