318 



Appendices to Fifth Annual Report 



common mussel, molluscs are absent from the food found in the stomachs, 

 and worms are almost wholly so. 



The Crustacea found were confined almost entirely to shrimps or prawns, 

 these seeming, from their frequent occurrence, to be a favourite food 

 supply of the whiting. Although one or two specimens of the smaller 

 Crustacea were found, the fact that they were so in general only as solitary 

 examples, seems to show that in these cases they were present by chance, 

 and not as having formed a real subject of food. 



Freely though the whiting takes these shrimps, its principal food 

 (taking into account the amount consumed, as well as the numbers of 

 whitings containing it) evidently consists of small fish. The shoals of 

 sprats in the Moray Firth certainly constitute a large, if not the main, 

 food supply of the whitings in that locality. It is also of interest to 

 observe that the three examples of Zoarces viviparus found among the food 

 all came from the Moray Firth. A good many sprats are known to be 

 often present in the sea off Stonehaven, and it is here again that they are 

 found forming part of the whiting's food ; but apart from these, the fish 

 consumed by the whitings along the East Coast seem to be almost entirely 

 young cod and haddock, and probably also their own species. The extent 

 to which these had been affected by digestive processes made it difficult 

 or impossible in many cases to decide to which of these species they 

 belonged, or even whether they were these at all, but this was done as 

 far as possible, and in most cases it was quite possible to distinguish these 

 remains from those of herrings or sprats. Where they were ascertained 

 to be certainly not sprats or herrings, but the particular species could not 

 be fixed, they have, in the following Table, been designated as ' white 

 < fish.' 



From the size of the whiting, nearly all the fish consumed by it must 

 be in their young state, and it would appear that they must be put down 

 as extensive destroyers — evidently more so than the cod and haddock — 

 of much of our own valuable food supply. It is probable that this more 

 restricted, and one might say more refined, dietary of the whiting, as 

 compared with that of the cod and haddock, may account for the con- 

 siderable difference — its greater delicacy, according to many opinions — of 

 the flesh of the former. 



The quality of its food, as given below, points towards the advantage 

 which might accrue to fishermen from more largely using a fish bait for 

 the capture of the whiting, though whether they would take pieces of fish 

 as readily as a complete small one is doubtful. 



The list below includes only those cases in which food was found, being 

 little more than two-thirds of those opened ; but the proportion of empty 

 to full stomachs is much larger than this, since the Fishery officers often 

 did not send up those which were evidently empty. I have not suffi- 

 ciently exact data to enable me to speak with certainty, but such as it is, 

 it points towards the fact that much the largest proportion of empty 

 stomachs is found among the line-caught fish in contradistinction to those 

 taken by trawl. This might be expected from the consideration that 

 probably the whitings (as also other fish) would take the line bait most 

 readily when in a state of hunger, and therefore presumably with their 

 stomachs empty; whereas, in many cases the 'full' and 'empty' would 

 be picked up indiscriminately by the trawl. 



Of the following examples, fish formed the whole or part of the contents 

 in 57 per cent, Crustacea in 53 per cent. ; 5 per cent, only contained 

 neither fish nor Crustacea. Of the 12 per cent, in which other food as 

 well as fish or Crustacea was found, in two-thirds it consisted of only a 

 single^mussel. 



