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Part III. — Twenty-first Annual Report 



investigations and practical fishery experiments, and also lays 

 particular stress on the compilation and study of precisely such 

 statistics of our fisheries as it is the practice of the Board to 

 prepare. Professor D'Arcy W. Thompson, the Scientific Member 

 of the Board, has been appointed Director of these investigations. 

 Scientific work apart from this International Programme, including 

 the maintenance of the hatchery at the Bay of Nigg, will be continued 

 by the Board under the superintendence of Dr. T. Wemyss Fulton. 



Meanwhile, and pending the completion of arrangements for the 

 new work, trawling experiments in the Moray Firth and Aberdeen 

 Bay have been carried on by utilising the services at intervals 

 of the large commercial steam-trawlers, equipped with the most 

 efficient otter-trawls, and with very satisfactory results. 



Investigations on Board Trawlers. 



These, as stated above, were carried on in 1902 as in the preceding 

 year, the localities examined being Aberdeen Bay in its whole 

 extent, and the chief fishing grounds in the Moray Firth, particu- 

 larly Burghead Bay and adjacent parts on the south coast, the 

 Dornoch Firth, the grounds of the coast of Caithness, Smith Bank, 

 and the deeper water areas known as the Witch Grounds. Two 

 voyages to the oflshore grounds were also made, one to those lying 

 east and south-east of the Shetland Islands, and another to the 

 Great Fisher Bank and the waters off the Buchan coast. The 

 results are described in a paper in the present Eeport by Dr. T. 

 Wemyss Fulton, the Scientific Superintendent, and the records of 

 the hauls are given in a series of Tables. 



In May the grounds in Aberdeen Bay were found to be compara- 

 tively unproductive, and the same condition prevailed at the various 

 grounds examined in the Moray Firth, 'Burghead Bay, off' Lybster, 

 Smith Bank, and off Cromarty. At Burghead Bay, for example, 

 the aggregate number of fishes taken in fifteen hauls, representing 

 sixty-two-and-a-half hours of actual fishing, was 14,257, of which 

 10,301 were marketable. The average number taken per hour's 

 fishing, with the largest otter-trawl in use, was thus scarcely 165 

 fishes of all kinds. The deep-water grounds off the Shetlands 

 were found to be more productive in the same month, ten hauls, 

 representing fifty hours of actual fishing, yielding 18,634 fishes, or 

 at the rate of 372*7 fishes per hour's fishing, the same vessel being 

 employed, and of the aggregate number 14,984 were marketable. 

 A little later, at the end of May and beginning of June, a series of 

 nine completely recorded hauls on the Great Fisher Bank, repre- 

 senting thirty hours' fishing, furnished only 4,096 fishes, or at the 

 rate of 113*8 fishes per hour — less, therefore, than in the Moray 

 Firth. The proportion of the different kinds of fishes in the various 

 areas differed considerably — plaice, for instance, being well repre- 

 sented in the Moray Firth, present in fair numbers on the Great 

 Fisher Bank, and absent on the deep-water grounds ; their presence 

 or absence as a rule has an important bearing on the profitable or 

 unprofitable results of the fishing. The Moray Firth was also found 



