Salt-Water Pish. ^9j 



Pacific coast, the cod fisheries of Alaska are of the 

 greatest importance; but the Pacific fisheries are in- 

 creasing. 



The cod spawns all winter, from November to the 

 last of March. Its eggs are free, and will float in water 

 of a density of 1.026 for a week or more, when they 

 settle down a little. At a temperature of 45 to 38 

 degrees they will hatch in from two to three weeks, 

 and absorb the sac in a little less than half that time. 

 The Government hatcheries at Gloucester, since 1878, 

 Wood's Hole and Ten-pound Island, Mass., turn out 

 great numbers, hut we never made much of a success 

 of it on Long Island, mainly because the water was 

 seldom denser in the inner harbor than 1.018, and of 

 the difficulty of getting and transporting the eggs. 



Many a cold morning before sunrise have I and my 

 men been on the fish cars at Fulton Market taking cod 

 eggs with fingers which had no feeling in them. Then 

 we would take the eggs in jars of water and on flannel 

 trays to be taken to the hatchery. I once took 3,000,000 

 eggs from a twenty-five-pound cod, and left some 

 which were not matured. A cod is sexually mature at 

 four years -old. When spawning at sea the sexes do 

 not seem to come close together, as is the case with 

 most of the fishes with whose spawning habits I am 

 familiar. If the egg meets the milt of the male and 

 absorbs a spermatozoon, while absorbing water, the egg 

 is fertilized. But nature, which gives the trout a few 

 hundred eggs, provides the cod with millions, to cover 

 their loss by not being fertilized, and many are thrown 

 on shore. 



Special apparatus was needed for floating eggs, and 

 the late Capt. Chester devised a "tidal hatcher" that 

 let the water in at the bottom and out by a siphon, 



